5. Will the Minister provide an update on accident and emergency preparedness in South Wales West for coronavirus? OAQ55216

In support of the UK action plan, which builds on existing pandemic flu preparedness work, a planning and response group involving both senior officials and key external stakeholders has been convened. This will provide strategic co-ordination and support within Government and across the health service. This, of course, includes ensuring NHS accident and emergency preparedness right across Wales.

Thank you for that response. You heard from Rhun ap Iorwerth a little earlier today about the lack of capacity within A&Es across Wales for dealing with pneumonia-like symptoms that may arise from coronavirus—perhaps another consideration for those who are pondering the future of the Royal Glamorgan at the moment, which also serves my constituents.

Apart from the logistics of moving people with these symptoms safely through a hospital that's full of sick and elderly, frail people, there's also the effect on financial planning that the local health boards will be looking at. There have been promises from the UK Government for moneys to mitigate the challenges that are facing the whole of the UK. Are you in a position to tell us yet about how that actually might make its way to Wales? Are we looking at Barnettisation or cost per head or consequential losses? Have you got any steer on that for us at the moment? Thank you.

You're right to say—and as I've indicated both in previous statements and in questions that I answered earlier today—that we'll need to consider how to change the service. That both means about people who currently go through an accident and emergency department and into a hospital, how that may change and how some of those routes work, but also to make sure there's more capacity within hospitals. So, we'll actually need to help people out of hospitals to make sure there's capacity for really sick people to go in over coming weeks. We don't yet understand all of the numbers, because we're not at a point to be able to actually predict that more clearly, but we know that we'll have to do some of that, and so already there are conversations within health and social care about how that could and should happen sooner rather than later.

I also reiterate the point that I made that we will, effectively, have to pause some of our normal performance management expectations and monitoring. It would not be a fair test to set for the health service to say, 'You have to keep on doing everything now as you do today and cope with significantly increased demand as well'. So, the challenge about the finance and our ability to plan—I'm afraid we're not in a position to understand exactly what the headline pledges from the Chancellor that he's made today actually mean. He said on the weekend that the NHS would have all the resources it needs. The Finance Minister and Trefnydd went to a meeting, in fact, yesterday morning, a very early meeting with other finance Ministers from the other three national devolved Governments and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and we—. We still don't yet have a full picture of what that means in practice, about whether there will be a headline measure that comes now to help us deliver and plan services or whether this will simply be about, at a later point, whether a needs-based provision will be provided. But there's been a broad indication that there is a recognition that this is a UK-wide challenge and won't be dealt with in, if you like, the normal way of delivering the funding that's allocated. But we want to see the detail of that, and, as we get that, I'll be more than happy to be upfront with Members and the public about what that means.

Question 6 [OAQ55199] is withdrawn. Question 7, Hefin David.