Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:23 pm on 14 September 2021.
Llywydd, I understand the points that are being made. The proportion of contacts with GPs and the rest of the clinical team that have been carrying out face to face is growing, but nobody, I think, should encourage the belief that a telephone consultation, a video consultation, is somehow a second-class or second-best form of contact with a GP. For many, many people, that will be their preferred route. It will be more effective; it will release GPs' time for other work. I've had reason myself over the summer to speak to a member of the primary care team, and I was able to do it because I didn't have to take myself all the way to the surgery in order to be able to do so, and I got all the advice that I needed very straightforwardly and easily over the telephone. We have to rely on the clinical judgment of our very skilled professionals to know when a face-to-face consultation is clinically necessary, and if we are going to ask them to continue doing all the things that we're asking them to do, and the extra things we're going to be asking them to do as well, then I think we have to show some confidence in their ability to use the new technology that they have effectively and to distinguish between those people who can be properly advised in that way and those people for whom a face-to-face consultation is a necessary part of the clinical investigation.