8. Will the First Minister outline the Welsh Government's priorities for the health service over the next twelve months? OAQ54880

I thank the Member for that. Amongst our priorities will be the deployment of our record investment in the Welsh NHS—an extra £342 million set out in the draft budget published on 16 December to strengthen primary care, to build further on the highest number ever of doctors and nurses we have in Wales and to respond to the challenges of an older population.

First Minister, yesterday, you confidently claimed at a press conference that plans for hospitals and health boards to cope with pressures for the winter period were holding up. You even highlighted that your Government had provided £30 million—very welcome—earlier than ever in the year to help health boards prepare for winter. However, I think within about half an hour of your press conference, my local health board, Hywel Dda, announced they'd experienced a level of escalation not seen before—we've been there before, haven't we, team—and that they would be canceling all inpatient operations across all of their hospitals in the interests of patient safety. This is shocking. This is the end of elective surgery in Hywel Dda at the moment.

First Minister, it's blatantly clear that the spin you provided to the press was not based on fact, or that you yourself are fully abreast of the current situation in our hospitals here in Wales. First Minister, when will your Government accept that there's a need for strong leadership of the Welsh NHS because these winter pressures happen—guess what—every winter? And we've been through this before. Yet again, the people in my constituency are having to wait endlessly for knee operations, hip operations, all manner of elective surgeries. There never seems to be an end to it.

Well, Llywydd, the Member is sadly badly informed about plans in Hywel Dda, because alongside all other health boards in Wales, there were very few operations scheduled for this week because this week is always the busiest week for unplanned admissions to our hospitals. Every year, as she says, it's entirely predictable, and because of that, it was planned for by that local health board.

Now, it has been a very busy and very challenging two weeks in the health service here in Wales, but the system has proved resilient to it because of the plans that local health boards, supported by the Welsh Government and that additional investment, have put in place. My understanding is that today, some planned surgery will have recommenced in Hywel Dda, and I want to put on record my gratitude to the staff of that health board and to staff right across Wales for the enormous efforts that they have made while this Assembly has been in recess, working right across Christmas and the new year to deal with the unprecedented demands, and to their colleagues there in social care in the Hywel Dda area who, yesterday and across the weekend, worked flat out to make sure that wherever they were able to provide help to move patients into the community, that they went well beyond what would normally be expected to help to do that. That's why the system has proved resilient, because of the enormous commitment of the people who work in it, and I think it's very good to have had the chance to put our appreciation of that on the record here this afternoon.

Thank you, First Minister.