Group 6: Duty to secure quality in health services — register of managers (Amendment 72)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:20 pm on 10 March 2020.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 6:20, 10 March 2020

Thank you very much to Plaid Cymru for bringing this forward. This element of the Bill is really important. I have a stand at the moment to abstain, and the reason for this is because I want to hear what the Minister is going to say in response to you. I agree, it is vitally important to create a register of managers. It's vitally important to have sanctions and measurability on it to make sure that they are doing the job that they're employed to do properly.

And, of course, the other great thing that can happen is that by having such a register, if you move a duff manager on or out, that person is picked up by the next organisation and trained appropriately and encouraged to develop and then pop back in at the right level. Very important—it's all about not being punitive but about identifying where somebody's doing a job that perhaps could be too big for them, that they get the right training, the right support, and they move on through.

Where I'm slightly unclear is the definition of manager. Now, I've been a manager for a big chunk of my life, and I've been registered as a manager, as a director with the Institute of Directors, with the institute of marketing, the Institute of Sales Management, the institute of general management in business, so I'm just slightly unclear, and I would like to have some clarity. Because if you look through, just briefly, you've got everybody from finance managers to hospital managers, estate managers, health and safety, ward managers. So, that's why I'm just slightly in the mood, at the moment, to abstain. I want to hear what the Minister has to say, but if you want to clarify that, it'd just be really, really helpful, because I think it's such an important point.