7. What actions is the Welsh Government taking to ensure that sufficient numbers of hospital beds are available for the winter months? OAQ54731

Thank you. Local health boards are responsible for delivering sufficient hospital bed capacity to meet the needs of their local populations throughout the year. As the health Minister, I announced £30 million of additional investment to deal with winter pressures at the start of October. This is earlier than ever before to help prevent unnecessary admissions of people into hospital and to enhance capacity and resilience right across our system.

Can I thank the Minister for that answer? Now, I fully understand the pressures of the winter upon our services and that, clearly, has implications upon bed occupancy within hospitals, and, consequently, elective surgeries, which are subsequently cancelled as this result of bed shortages. We're seeing that, I've experienced that, and many of my constituents have.

I fully appreciate the commitment of delivering care. For example, I was at Morriston yesterday, but there were 10 ambulances stacked up outside the accident and emergency department yesterday at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, which clearly has implications of actually getting ambulances out to people. Part of the problem is flow through hospitals—we know that, we know there's a problem. And I also know the argument that if beds are there, they'll be filled quickly. But if we don't address the issue of how we deal with some of these points, we're going to have patients waiting in ambulances outside A&E, patients not having elective operations, patients waiting in homes 14 hours—as I've had a constituent telling me—for an ambulance, because they're stacked up outside Morriston Hospital.

It is important that we look at how we manage those beds and ensure that the bed occupancies are used effectively. Can you give us an indication as to how the Welsh Government will actually address the issue of bed availability to people, so elective surgeries are not cancelled and people wait longer, so that when people turn up at A&E, they won't be waiting in an ambulance for 14 hours outside A&E, and won't be waiting for an ambulance 14 hours in their homes?

That's consistent with the approach that we want to take more progressively in terms of not just moving more care closer to home, but getting people out of hospital when they don't even need to be there and avoiding people going into hospital in the first place. And in the winter moneys that I announced, some of that money went directly to the health service, but £17 million of it went directly to regional partnership boards, so that the health service and their partners in local government, housing and the third sector have to work together on understanding what would make the biggest impact for the whole system. Because the challenge about the front door of a hospital is actually about the way that the whole system works. Some of that is about moving to a different part of the health service when you're medically fit, but more often than not, it is about moving into social care support, to return to your own home or a different care service. And that's why we talk about bed equivalents—that's about getting people out of the hospital where they don't even need to be—to move them where an appropriate place for their care is.

And you'll see in the winter plans that are published in the first week of December the full total of the number of bed capacity, including the bed equivalents, and the bed equivalents are at least as important, because that is getting to the right part of our care system. It's also why I and the Deputy Minister spend so much time being interested in, and want to see improvement in, delayed transfers of care, because those are people who require care services but are in the wrong part of our system to receive the appropriate care for them. So, it's a continuing point of investment, a continuing point of pressure within our system, but I recognise the point of investment this Government needs to continue to make right across health and social care.

Finally, question 8—Lynne Neagle.