Improving the Health Service

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:30 pm on 21 January 2020.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 1:30, 21 January 2020

Well, First Minister, as you know, recent weeks have brought to the fore the current pressures that are facing the Welsh NHS—'winter pressures', as we like to term them, though the reality is that they are there for most of the year. Now, in the words of Dr Phil Banfield, the British Medical Association Cymru Wales consultant committee chair, he said 

'It is clear from the latest developments that things are getting worse not better.'

He also went on to state that

'Care will suffer if something isn't done about this now. This must be taken seriously. There is a real chance of lives being needlessly lost.'

First Minister, the BMA also go on to suggest, as many of us have in this Chamber suggested, the various things that need to be done to alleviate winter pressures and the kinds of areas that we need to look at, from increasing beds in hospitals, to increasing people's ability to come out of hospital and be supported in the community, to ensuring that only the people who need to go into hospital go into hospital. So, we're four years in, and this was a priority of the Welsh Government. Can you please tell us, in the remaining year that we have, whether or not you'll finally be able to address this very serious issue? And it is serious, because I want to end on this one note. Dr Banfield, who represents a great many people in the health NHS goes on to say that the staff pressures are intolerable, and that patients' lives are at risk. This is not an acceptable situation.