Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:45 pm on 17 March 2020.
I thank Lynne Neagle for those questions. Llywydd, I won't attempt to provide a number, the specific numbers that Lynne asked for in relation to ventilators. The health Minister may well have had them; they're not in my recollection. But we can ask Vaughan to establish that. I'll certainly undertake to make sure that the circular, when it's published—that Members' attention is drawn to it and a link provided so everybody can access it.
As far as critical care is concerned, I don't for a minute want to underplay the very, very real pressures critical-care capacity will come under in this country. I think comparisons with other countries are often difficult, because definitions are different and the way in which beds are counted is different, but, when you set all that aside, there is no doubt at all that the pressure that we will come under will be very real indeed. The first thing we will do will be to mobilise the plans that health boards already have, which allow them to double the current number of critical care beds. When our colleague Vaughan Gething announced £15 million additional investment in critical-care capacity last year, there was a particular emphasis on critical-care outreach capacity. Because there are often patients who remain on an ordinary ward who are at the cusp of can they be looked after there—do they need critical care and critical-care outreach? Allowing those people to continue to be looked after in the ward that they are on was very much part of last year's plan, and will be part of the health service's planning, and more is being done to plan for the demand we know that there will be.
On mental health, I entirely agree with the points that Lynne Neagle has made. It's one of the reasons why we have been keen not to move rapidly to school closures, because we know that there are thousands of young people in our schools who rely on the health services that we have quite recently developed in our whole-school approach. And if we reach a point where schools are no longer able to open in the way that they do now, then as well as thinking about how we can respond to the needs of people who need free school meals, and how we will deal with children of people who are front-line workers and need to be in work, we also need to plan for providing for the mental health needs of those young people who are currently catered for in schools and may not be catered for in that way if schools have to shut.
I've heard nobody around the Chamber argue for a precipitate move to school closure, and the issue is properly a very live one, but part of the reason for being keen for schools to continue as best they can for as long as they can is to give us all a chance to plan for the many needs that schools meet today and will have to be met in different ways if the current system doesn't continue as it now does.