1. What assessment has the First Minister made of hospital capacity in South Wales East? OQ57425

Llywydd, I thank the Member for that first question. Staff absences, combined with winter pressures and a rise in COVID cases, have led to significant challenges for health boards across Wales. All health boards, including those in the south-east, have plans in place to increase physical capacity and align available human resources with the most urgent clinical needs.

Thank you, First Minister. As you've said, hospitals are under tremendous strain owing to the omicron variant of COVID-19. Dr Phil Banfield, the chair of the British Medical Association's Welsh consultants committee, has described how doctors are getting very distressed about their inability to assess patients in emergency departments, and that the sheer numbers of people getting this variant mean even a small number of them being admitted to hospital could threaten to tip the NHS in Wales over the edge. And that chimes with what an intensive therapy unit consultant from the Aneurin Bevan health board has said on social media about large numbers of COVID patients, and how this, coupled with staff shortages, is affecting the NHS's ability to conduct routine operations, out-patient services and diagnostics. 

Last week, the BMA Cymru members' survey found that one in five doctors in Wales has had to self-isolate from work because of COVID in the past two weeks, and they are calling for the Welsh Government to allow for FFP2 masks to be available for all front-line healthcare staff, and FFP3 masks to be available for all of those treating known COVID patients. So, First Minister, will you provide them?

Well, Llywydd, the position on masks is this: that there is a national specialist group that advises the Government on the use of personal protective equipment, including higher grade masks. At the start of December, the chief nursing officer and the chief medical officer asked that committee for updated advice, looking at those masks in the context of the omicron variant. We follow their advice. Their advice is that those masks should not be made available everywhere, but, in the advice that they published, they drew to the attention of health boards in Wales the flexibility that health boards have to extend the use of such masks in clinical settings where a local judgment would assess them as being a part of the protections available to staff. And I notice that the number of those masks that have been provided by shared services in more recent weeks has gone up across Wales. And while that remains the advice of the expert committee, I think that is the advice we simply have to follow here in Wales—not universal use of them, but flexibility for local decision making and greater use of them where that is felt to be an important clinical safeguard. 

First Minister, there is great concern amongst residents in south-east Wales at the decision by the Aneurin Bevan health board to cut its services to the public due to staff shortages. Cuts include reducing hours at the minor injuries unit at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr, in spite of your Government encouraging patients to use these services instead of heading straight to the accident and emergency department at the Grange University Hospital. Whilst I sincerely recognise the effect of coronavirus, and particularly the omicron variant, on staffing levels, it is a fact that the NHS in Wales is seriously understaffed, as my able colleague just mentioned. It was revealed last year that there were 3,000 NHS Wales staff vacancies, with every A&E department in Wales failing to meet safe staffing levels. You did mention earlier, First Minister, that you have got plans in place, but I'd be really interested to know in a bit more depth and detail what action your Government is taking to address the serious staff shortage in the NHS and the failure to safely staff A&E departments across south-east Wales. Thank you.

Well, first of all, Llywydd, I have to take issue with the last remark. Staffing levels in A&E departments in Wales, at their complement level, are not unsafe—of course they're not; they meet the different royal college requirements. Now, at the moment, because of the omicron variant, we have significant proportions of staff in the NHS, and other public services in Wales, unable to be in the workplace. Aneurin Bevan itself has over 1,300 members of its staff either directly ill with the omicron variant or self-isolating because they've been in contact with it. There are nearly 10,000 staff across the whole of NHS Wales affected in that way. And, as hard as the service works to try to make sure that it protects essential services, and that people who are in the most clinically urgent position get the service they need, it is impossible to imagine that a service that has thousands of people unable to be in work because of a global pandemic can carry on as though that were not happening. So, I think the anxieties that people in Wales have are at how we can act together to protect ourselves and those staff from the wave of coronavirus that is passing through Wales. And I commend the staff in our NHS for everything that they are doing—the enormous strains they are under, to do everything they can, despite those difficulties, to go on providing a service day in, day out to patients in south-east Wales and across the whole of our nation.

First Minister, one of the fundamental tasks of any government is to protect lives and ensure the public health of its citizens, and the Welsh Government has prioritised keeping Wales safe during this global pandemic. With the omicron wave that engulfed us, public health measures were required, and we see encouraging signs, with the infection rate falling for two days in a row. First Minister, I have received representations from hospitality businesses in Islwyn, clearly concerned about the loss of business that they're currently suffering from. What representations has the Welsh Government made to the UK Government Treasury for further financial aid to Welsh businesses that have been impacted by the current necessary public health measures taken in Wales? And, First Minister, will you clarify that you and your Ministers will continue to monitor the situation daily and ensure that the needs of our NHS, our economy, and the public health of the people of Wales are balanced, delivering the best possible outcomes during this hugely challenging time?

Llywydd, I thank Rhianon Passmore for what she said at the start of her supplementary question. Here in Wales, we have a Government that is both capable and determined to take those difficult decisions that help to keep people safe and to keep our economy open. And we do so in the context of the latest omicron wave. I'd just caution Members about the most recent figures—they do show the start of a decline in the number of people falling ill; they are still astronomically high compared to what we would have seen in earlier parts of the pandemic, and it is not clear as to whether or not these are genuine falls or whether they are a result of fewer people presenting for PCR tests because of the substitution of lateral flow tests in a number of contexts where previously PCR tests would have been used. So, I think it will be a few days yet before we know whether those signs are genuine signs of a downturn in figures in Wales, or whether it's actually just a reflection of some policy changes.

In the meantime, of course we go on supporting the economy in the challenging circumstances that it faces: £120 million—money that this week will start to leave the Welsh Government and be in the hands of businesses in every part of Wales. Our many efforts to persuade the UK Government that the Treasury should be a Treasury for the whole of the United Kingdom, not just a Treasury that responds when English Ministers think that they need help in England, has simply fallen on deaf ears. That £120 million is money found from within our own resources, and we do go on, as Rhianon Passmore said, Llywydd, every day studying the figures and to have those conversations with different parts of the Welsh economy to make sure that we are doing what we can as a Government to help them as, together, we get through this latest very challenging time.