Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 14 December 2021.
Llywydd, I would always want to listen to concerns raised by such voices. I did make a direct inquiry of the health board, knowing that this question would be asked of me today, and was told that concerns of that sort hadn't been raised either by the people responsible for the service or by people delivering it, although the system everywhere in Wales is under huge pressure, and we're about to ask the people we rely on to provide the 111 service, in some instances, to be part of the new booster vaccination system. So, it is not a surprise—it cannot be a surprise—to anybody to find that the system is not always able to provide as timely a response to people as it would were we in calmer territory. I asked the health board as well whether it was receiving complaints from the public about the quality of the service, and they told me that complaints were running at less than one in every 1,000 users of the service. So, this is not for a minute to discount the important points that the Member has raised—and I'll make sure that they are conveyed to the health board—but I think there's probably more than one account of the way in which the service is trying to provide a quality response to the needs of people in north Wales, despite the very real demands that we are placing on the health service in the face of the global pandemic.