3. Will the First Minister make a statement on non-COVID-19 related treatment in Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board? OQ55816

Thank you, Llywydd. Each health board will continue to deliver essential services. The quarterly NHS Wales operating frameworks and the subsequent plans developed by health boards set out the actions being taken to increase capacity, cautiously restoring other services safely over time, with a phased approach based on clinical priority.

Thank you, First Minister. This, really, follows on the very pertinent points that our Welsh Conservative leader, Paul Davies, has raised here today, because, certainly, residents and, indeed, patients—residents of mine and patients in Aberconwy with non-COVID medical needs certainly are being left behind. I have one constituent who saw their gastro appointment cancelled in April and only secured a telephone consultation by turning and taking to Twitter. Another resident has been waiting for a double knee replacement since November 2017.

In response to another orthopaedic case, the Minister for health wrote to me that it is difficult for the health board to provide an understanding of when services may return for non-urgent patients. Finally, only last week, Mark Polin, the chairman of the health board, advised me that there now has been a considerable increase in the number waiting for orthopaedic appointments. Neither the acting chief executive nor the Minister is able to give me dates for treatment where my patients have been waiting for this treatment that is considered, in many cases, to be urgent, and they are just waiting weeks and months.

So, what urgent steps will you take to ensure that more wards are set aside for non-COVID related treatment in north Wales? Will you put some merit to the proposals put forward by Paul Davies today to actually open up some areas—non-COVID areas—where treatment can be carried out to deal, certainly in the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, with their orthopaedic crisis and other treatment requirements? Thank you. 

Well, Llywydd, I don't think that is quite the point that Paul Davies made to me. Mr Davies was asking whether we would consider making whole hospitals non-coronavirus sites. I explained to him why I thought that would be challenging, given our geography. I think it would be challenging, given our geography, in north Wales. I'm not sure that the Member's electors would thank her if we were to take that advice, given the implications that that would have for people suffering from coronavirus in her constituency or others.

As I've said, the impact of coronavirus on our health service is profound, not simply in the number of people who are in our hospitals suffering from it, but in the ways in which clinicians now have to operate. So, an operating theatre that previously would have carried out eight orthopaedic operations in a single day is now probably only able to do three such procedures. That is because the operating theatre has to be cleaned after every single operation, because clinicians are wearing full personal protective equipment in doing so. The productivity—no matter how hard you try and no matter how much we ask of our staff, coronavirus has a very, very real impact, not just on the number of people who we are able to draw into the system, but the rate at which our clinicians are able to treat them.

Now, the health Minister made a statement here in the Senedd last week setting out plans for Betsi Cadwaladr. I'm sure the Member will have welcomed the £30 million extra a year for the next three and a half years that will be provided by the Welsh Government to make sure that we have a sustained unscheduled care and planned care programme, including orthopaedics, in north Wales, and I look forward to the new chief executive's arrival in the beginning of January, and for her now to be able to plan for the future of services in north Wales, knowing that she has that significant additional investment available to her from which she can take on the leadership of that organisation.

First Minister, the effect of the focus on COVID-19 by all health services in the UK has been well rehearsed in this Chamber, as we've just heard, but, once again, for the record, cancer charities estimate that referrals for cancer screening are down by 70 per cent. Now, even a lay person could see that the health service's focus on COVID—this is a disaster waiting in the wings. Now, recent reports suggest COVID was at No. 19 in the league of causes of death in Wales in September. In fact, the most prolific killers were heart disease and dementia-related illnesses. I still don't think you specifically answered Janet Finch-Saunders, so I'll ask this question with that in mind. What steps are you going to take to ensure that the Welsh NHS does not become the national COVID service? Thank you.

Well, Llywydd, I completely disagree with the Member, because I think her suggestion is that we have somehow over-prioritised the treatment of coronavirus patients here in Wales. Last week, Public Health Wales reported that the two-thousandth patient in Wales to die from coronavirus was being reported in their statistics. I don't think those people or their families would agree with Mandy Jones that somehow we should have neglected the care of coronavirus patients in order to care for others. And she seems to deny the fact that there is a choice that has to be made here, because the health service cannot simply manage to do everything we are asking of it in a global pandemic and carry on as though the global pandemic were not taking place. It's very easy, where she sits, to think that easy choices of that sort can be made. They simply don't exist in the real world. They simply don't exist in the lives of the staff that we rely on to provide these services. The single biggest contribution that can be made to making sure that non-coronavirus care can be continued is to take coronavirus seriously. That's what she fails to do and she's doing it again this afternoon.