Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 19 November 2019.
Well, Llywydd, I'm sure that what I would expect or demand of the Minister for health is unimportant. I would argue, however, that what the public, patients and, importantly, front-line staff expect is important, and they will come to their own conclusions about the way in which he responds to scrutiny, both here and in the health committee.
To refer back to David Jenkins, he said, of course, as the Minister rightly says, that, since the intervention, the board had done what they should have done in responding to the need for that intervention. But he was very clear that their performance before that was absolutely not up to scratch, and those families have suffered and those front-line staff have been put in an impossible position, because the people the Minister appointed were not up to doing their job until he intervened.
I would put it to him that, after 20 years of the Labour Party running the health service in Wales, GP numbers have fallen, the accident and emergency waiting times are the longest we've ever seen, life expectancy in Wales is falling for the first time in a generation. And I would say to him that, if he isn't able to transform this service in the way it needs to be transformed, perhaps he should get out of the way.