Primary Healthcare

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:13 pm on 19 November 2019.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:13, 19 November 2019

Well, as I've said on a number of occasions, I think artificial percentages are the wrong way to look at dividing up the health budget and actually investing in our priorities. It's a matter of fact that secondary and tertiary care is much more expensive to deliver than primary care, so there's going to be an imbalance in the budget. I'm interested in making sure that we do properly invest in the future of primary care. That's why the additional resource I've put into therapist training, for example, is such an important step forward in continuing to invest in the future of the workforce.

But more than that, of course, you weren't there, so you wouldn't have heard this, but at the recent primary care conference, there was a really positive response from our cluster leads locally and, indeed, the sincerest form of flattery has come from across the border because they're copying the way that we're arranging and engaging the new primary care model and working together in clusters.

But I was able to set out that when we are in a position to set our budget, I expect to invest more in our clusters so they have more freedom to invest money into local choices, so that's the partnership at a primary care level having more of their own freedom, in addition to the wider budget. And I look forward to making the full budget available once we're able to publish our budget after the general election.