Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 11 June 2019.
I had understood that the special measures regime was at least intended to be a shorter or a sharper intervention to turn around a failing body or at least a body in which there were problems. I just wonder, reflecting on the questions we had from the leader of the opposition, whether the First Minister would consider whether the special measures regime that has developed strikes that correct balance, because it has now gone for over four years with that particular body but, at the same time, we're seeing almost half of health boards in Wales in the special measures regime. Doesn't that give a risk that the attentions of the health Minister, however much the First Minister supports him, are spread too thinly? Does it also give a risk for Betsi Cadwaladr in particular? Yes, we accepted in your motion last week that a couple of the issues have improved that were initially identified. However, a number of other issues, and really very serious and, I think, across the board rather than selectively quoted—for instance that over 70,000 waiting over six months, a seven-hour average wait at accident and emergency, and the emergence and worsening of problems in those areas, amongst others—. Does any of that reflect the fact that it has been in special measures for four years and that some of those local managers, perhaps some of those local clinicians, don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it makes it harder to recruit or retain people or drive that local improvement from them while the special measures regime lasts?
Finally from me, could I ask about the community health councils and the pending legislation we have in this area? One area in which they've done well is bringing in local vloolunteers, local people, seeing them as independent and able, to a degree, to hold Welsh Government and local health boards to account. Is the First Minister not concerned, as many others are, that, come this new legislation, bottom-up bodies where the chair of each body is on the national board will be replaced with a top-down body more under the thumb of Welsh Government and therefore less open to local people and less independent? [Interruption.] It was still less than three minutes. I'm not allowed to come back.