Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 11 March 2020.
I do agree with you that you've got to have the right person in the right place doing the right job, and I also agree with you that the new chair of Betsi Cadwaladr has made some extraordinary changes and does appear to have the energy, the drive, the initiative and the experience to be able to lead that organisation forward. But the reality of the situation is that the ex-chief executive was basically in the job a couple of years too long, and so that health board has stagnated over these past few years. I appreciate you've got an interim—or the board have got an interim—chief executive in. However, what I really want to understand is how long will the hunt for a new chief executive take. And can you assure the Senedd that there are no barriers in place to ensure that that health board actually has the finances to recruit the best-quality individual with the best level of experience to lead it out of the doldrums that it has sat in for the past five years? Because not only will that chief executive need to have huge experience in running large public service organisations, but will also have to have a spine of steel in order to cut like a knife through butter to get rid of some of the other levels of management that perhaps are not experienced enough, and not capable of bringing that health board forward.