3. What guidance has the Welsh Government given health boards to resume non-Covid-19 and non-life threatening treatments? OQ55425

Thank you. I have issued NHS Wales COVID-19 operating frameworks for quarter 1 of this financial year, and more recently quarter 2. These provide guidance on the actions to be taken across the health and social care system, and build towards returning to the delivery of a wider range of services.

Thank you for that answer, Minister, and thank you for the answers to earlier questions on a similar theme, because it's important that we address the issues of looking after our people who have not got COVID-19, but who still have some very serious health concerns and issues. Last week in the health and social care committee, we actually heard that as well as the waiting lists, which are clearly expanding as we wait because of the delays in treatments, there is likely to be another bubble of waiting lists of those individuals who have not come forward yet, but who will come forward with treatments required for conditions they currently have. What's the Welsh Government going to do to help health boards through this challenge? Because, in the past, you've done waiting list initiatives. Are you going to do something similar or other actions to help health boards and maybe actually introduce additional facilities to get through the waiting lists that will definitely be created as a consequence of this?

There are a number of different steps we're taking. You'll have heard the First Minister describe this earlier. It's not a simple or straightforward matter, because the normal waiting list initiatives, the way we'd have worked, we'd have been able to get through more in, if you like, standard NHS time, as well as running additional sessions. That's less likely to be possible in the same way. It's why we've maintained contact with the independent sector and how they may be able to help in terms of dealing with both urgent and other matters too. But it's also why we're looking at the current operating framework and the need to continually reform the way we deliver services. As we're looking to have green zones, we may end up having a greater amount of elective care and throughput in some parts of the service because of the way we will have to behave to make sure that we have COVID-secure and, if you like, COVID-positive or COVID-suspected zones as well. So you can expect to see that in health board plans, but also in the statements that I expect to bring back to the Senedd as we go into the autumn, to set out some more detail of that. And of course, health board plans will go through the normal health board governance and be published as part of the health board papers. 

Minister, there was already unequal access to non-life-threatening treatments in the NHS across Wales. We know that the situation, for example, even before COVID in north Wales was that people were having to wait up to two years for their orthopaedic procedures. So can you tell us, in these actions that you're expecting health boards to take, will there be specific additional support for health boards like the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to help it to get to grips with what is likely to be a much more significant problem in north Wales than perhaps in other parts of the country?

Well, I wouldn't want to speculate on the relative challenge between different parts of the country. What I do know is that every health board is actively looking at what it will need to do to make sure it's on top of not just the numbers on the waiting list, but the clinical prioritisation of those different people who are waiting for different procedures, and how we need to safely restart more activity within the service. That's why the decision that I made and confirmed yesterday, to take steps on the debt levels of some NHS organisations, has been a significant positive factor. To be fair, it's a matter that the official spokesperson from the Welsh Conservatives had asked me to consider over a number of weeks, to make sure that in COVID planning, health boards weren't then put into a position where they'd have to reconsider making financial savings ahead of actually doing the right thing through these extraordinary circumstances. I always said that no health board would be compromised or punished for doing the right thing, and that underpins the choice that I made yesterday to help health boards to plan constructively and positively for the future and the people that they serve.