Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:24 pm on 15 June 2021.
Llywydd, I thank the Member for those detailed questions. I'll do my best to answer as many of them as I can as quickly as I can. The 12,000 additional staff for the health service is, of course, a five-year commitment because these are new staff coming out of treatment—out of training, I beg your pardon. A nurse who began training two years ago will be available in the NHS this year; a nurse who began training in September of last year will not be trained for three years. So, this is a production line of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists—all those many, many people that we rely on for the health service. Three years is the minimum length of time that it takes to train for any of those roles, and many of them are five and more years, and the investment that we make is an investment that doesn't see its payoff sometimes even into the Senedd term beyond the one that we are now beginning. So, those will be staff that will become available over the whole term, beginning immediately at the end of the current academic year.