Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:40 pm on 29 April 2020.
Well, I'm pleased to hear the oxygen flow issues are being addressed and are being highlighted, and that's, of course, important. It's partly, though, because of the flexing up of critical care capacity and the much greater use of oxygen, and so the flow that's required has obviously increased. That's not a surprise when we think about what's happening.
In terms of investing in that work over a period of time, well, as we learn lessons, not just at the end of this but all the way through this, we'll of course have questions to ask about what we have done but then more importantly what we choose to do in the future for our preparation, not just for a potential future pandemic, but actually for what we think of as normal business and what level of resilience we need. And that's quite a difficult debate, actually, because that is about how we use resources and how we spend money prospectively when, actually, we've gone through a period of more than a decade where, actually, it's been about a deliberate policy to take money out of public services, and we've all had to cope with a significantly reduced amount to do that with.
On your final point about whether this means that Ysbyty Gwynedd is being downgraded, I simply don't agree with you. There is no secret plan to downgrade Ysbyty Gwynedd and to do it secretly and quietly through the back door, so I'm happy to reassure you that this isn't the plan of either myself or anyone else. The reconfiguration of health services right across the country is about how we design what works best within our health and care system and how we meet the challenge set for us by the parliamentary review that set out that, on some services, we could and should see a better service with better outcomes for people if we concentrate those highly specialist areas, but equally on others, they should move out of specialist centres either into local provision or, indeed, primary and community care. That is the basic plan that we have right across the country, and it's really important that we reflect that that is the best way to deliver the best possible care to each of us and that's the way we could and should organise our system.