Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 13 November 2019.
Thank you. Although Public Health Wales provides specialist public health support to the 22 local authorities in Wales, responsibility for public health in Wales is shared amongst all the NHS bodies, with leadership provided by Public Health Wales. In contrast, in England, the main statutory duties for public health were proffered on local authorities in 2013, with responsibility in local authorities for improving health of the local population and for public health services, including no sexual health services and services aimed at reducing drug and alcohol misuse. I recently had a meeting with executive members and officers of a local authority in Wales, who told me that in England, as a consequence, there'd been a better focus and scrutiny for the same resources. A subsequent report to the launch of this in England by the independent health and social care charity and think tank, King's Fund, said,
'The transfer of public health functions and staff...to local authorities has gone, in most cases, remarkably smoothly, with directors of public health confident of better health outcomes in the future and reporting positive experiences of working in local authorities.'
Without prejudging this, what consideration or what review role does the Welsh Government have in considering, on a neutral basis, on a non-judgmental basis, what works best in an outcome-related manner and looking at whether the systems across the border are delivering better, as was alleged to me?