2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:46 pm on 1 December 2020.

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Photo of Andrew RT Davies Andrew RT Davies Conservative 2:46, 1 December 2020

Organiser, can I seek two statements, please? One in relation to the cancer plan that comes to an end at the end of this month, 31 December. To date, the Welsh Government haven't tabled a successor document despite this date of termination well known to Government. I appreciate that the function of Government has been focused on COVID, but this isn't something that's just appeared on the dashboard. And one thing we've learned through COVID, regrettably, is that, obviously, the demise of cancer services in the early part of COVID has led to many people now, regrettably, as Macmillan have identified, walking around Wales with unidentified cancer—they estimate nearly 3,000 people—and regrettably nearly 2,000 people, in their estimations, will die prematurely from a cancer because, obviously, they weren't able to access the services that they would, in normal circumstances, have been able to access if COVID hadn't hit the health service. I think it is of vital importance that this document is brought forward as a matter of urgency from the Welsh Government so that there is a successor plan in place when we go into the new year, because this is a critical pinch point within the NHS in Wales, and I'd hope that the Welsh Government has been working to develop that plan. So, could we have a statement from the Minister for health as to how he's going to bring forward the new plan and, importantly, how that plan has been tested with professionals in the cancer field to make sure that it is robust enough?

The second statement I'd seek, off the health Minister again, is around ambulance services. I wouldn't ask you to respond directly to the case I'll highlight to you, but this week, in Cardiff, I was alerted to a case where an ambulance was called at midday on Saturday for an industrial injury, where a gentleman had fallen from a lorry and cracked his head on concrete. He was left for eight hours waiting for an ambulance to arrive to the southern part of Cardiff, in a city where its A&E department, as the crow flies, would've been about a mile and a half or two miles from that incident. The ambulance finally turned up at close to 8 o'clock in the evening. I have the pictures on my phone; they are too graphic to show in any meaningful way without being the cause of upset. I wouldn't expect you to respond to that specific incident, but the evidence that we've taken in the health committee has indicated that there is growing pressure on the ambulance service, for perfectly understandable reasons in some instances—the use of PPE and disinfecting and cleansing of ambulances after each use—and this is a growing pressure point as we go further into the winter. I cannot recall a statement recently from the health Minister around ambulance services, and it is important that we understand how the Minister is engaging with the trust to make sure that, where possible, such delays as I've outlined this afternoon are not experienced by people who require an ambulance to attend as a matter of urgency.