6. Will the Minister make a statement on the future of primary care provision in the Llanharan area? OQ56476

Thank you. There is a need for a further development of primary care provision within Llanharan. There are significant housing developments planned in the area. Although there is sufficient primary care capacity at present, as those housing developments progress, more capacity will inevitably be needed, and I recognise the Member's long-standing interest in this issue.

Minister, thank you for that answer, and I genuinely want to put on record my thanks to Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board and to Rhondda Cynon Taf council and a couple of the local councillors—Roger Turner and Geraint Hopkins—who have worked with me in partnership through a series of meetings, over the last not just 12 months but two, three, four, five years, in order to scope out the potential development for a new health and well-being centre in the Llanharan area. As you say, the population has grown, it is still growing, and even though the provision there is well served by local GPs from Talbot Green, Pontyclun, Pencoed and so on, there will be a need for more. So, I am delighted that we're at the stage now where we are being told that there is a real willingness to look at the provision of a centre.

Minister, could I ask you: if you are returned, and if you are still in that same role going forward after the election, would you work with me, work with the health board, with RCT and with local councillors to actually make real that concept of the type of thing we've seen in places like Gilfach Goch and others, where it's not just GPs, but it's occupational therapists, chiropractors, district nurses and midwives, working out of a centre locally for the good and the well-being of all the people in Llanharan and the area?

Yes, I'd be very happy to do that, and as you know, I've met with yourself and Councillor Geraint Hopkins, and others, to discuss the challenges in the local area previously. I think you're right to set out a multidisciplinary future—general practitioners working with other healthcare professionals, nurses, other therapists, in delivering a wider suite of services. I think it is important to again draw on the partnership that the health board will need with the council, as well, in understanding what those services are. It may be health and services outside health that make a Llanharan centre much more attractive to the local population and actually delivering services that people need, exactly in the same way the example in Cynon valley, in Aberdare, exemplifies that. I think there's more of that in the future, and you can expect to see more of that, I hope, in the manifesto that I expect us both to stand on. And I look forward to seeing what the voters say, and then, whoever the new First Minister is, and whether I return here or not, depending, of course, on who is in the First Minister's office.