Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:41 pm on 12 February 2020.
And the problem—the problem that all of us face is that, if we can't recruit the right number of permanent consultants to deliver that service, then we won't be able to do that. And it's not simply a matter of saying the south Wales programme is to blame. That doesn't resolve the problem. It would just avoid the problem we face, and, actually, we all know that if you ignore safety concerns that are provided by staff, by people delivering that care—if you fail to deal with that challenge—then, actually, you will end up providing an unsafe service, harm being caused, and then people concerned will quite rightly say, 'Why didn't you do something about it? Why didn't the health board do something about it?'
And this isn't a question of the amount of effort that goes into recruitment. Emergency medicine is a shortage area of practice. Right across the United Kingdom there are challenges. This is not a situation that is unique to one part of Wales. And I understand why people have strong feelings, and I don't ask people to park their feelings or to avoid the challenges that exist. But I do want us to have a debate that is honest about the real challenges that we face and not to try to pretend to ourselves or anybody else that there is an easy answer—that, if only people tried harder, all of the challenges wouldn't exist.