Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 19 November 2019.
I'm so pleased to hear your warm words about the importance of maintaining and developing primary care and the importance about it not just being about the GP, but, of course, using all the other allied healthcare professionals that are vital to making community services work.
Now, last week, the First Minister said to me at about this point in time, I think, that,
'the health service needs to be seen in the round, and that cannot mean a focus just on hospitals.'
That's something I completely agree with, something the parliamentary review was very clear about, and something, indeed, you've tried to reflect in 'A Healthier Wales', your vision for healthcare going forward. So, can you please tell me, Minister, when do you intend to actually divert more of the health budget into community services and into primary care? Because we're asking an awful lot of our primary care and community services, but they're doing it on the same levels of budget that they have done. It incrementally grows. The Royal College of General Practitioners would like to see it at 11 to 12 per cent. Can you please tell us how you're going to start to take that money out of secondary care, out of the big, expensive element, see the health service completely in the round, as it should be, and put some of the funding where you're trying to transform the services and make that transition, or else it simply will not happen?