3. Will the First Minister provide an update on orthopaedic waiting lists in the Powys Teaching Health Board area? OQ57538

Llywydd, 4,433 Powys residents are waiting for orthopaedic treatment, of whom 2,532, or 57 per cent, are waiting for treatment in England. The number of Powys residents waiting over 36 weeks for orthopaedic treatment fell by 16 per cent between November 2020 and November 2021.

Diolch, First Minister. The number of people waiting for orthopaedic operations or assessments is increasing—the data is there—in the Powys Teaching Health Board area. This isn't just a Wales issue, this is a UK issue, with people waiting for operations. People are now living in day-to-day pain. A UK study found that 71 per cent of older people waiting for treatment said that their health had got worse during the pandemic. Many people are losing out on their lives and they're taking out private loans so they can access treatment in the private sector. I've been speaking to medical professionals across the NHS who believe that we need to look at having two specialist hospitals, one in south Wales and one in north Wales, that solely focus on orthopaedic care and rehabilitation, because the current model of every hospital doing everything is simply not working with the massive demands on surgery space. So, First Minister, would you consider looking at this model to get orthopaedic waiting lists down, so we can give those people in pain in Powys and right across the rest of Wales some hope and some light at the end of the tunnel? Diolch, Llywydd.

The Welsh Government is willing to consider all the ideas that are there in order to help us to deal with the backlog that has built up during the COVID pandemic. James Evans is right; it is not a Welsh problem, it is a UK problem, and that's very much borne out in the Powys circumstances.

We've had this debate on the floor of the Senedd previously, and I'd just say to him what I've said to others: in Welsh geography, that sort of solution is challenging, because if you are to turn over an existing hospital entirely to cold surgery, planned surgery, then everything else that people rely on that hospital to do will no longer be available to them there. I had this debate with Paul Davies in the Chamber, and asked him then how he thought the people of Haverfordwest would react if Withybush were to become one of those two centres, because then, everything else that people go to Withybush for would not be available to them there.

I'm not certain myself that our geography lends itself easily to turning over a whole hospital to be a planned surgery centre. But what that doesn't mean is that we cannot begin to concentrate those facilities in particular hospitals, like the hospital in Llanelli, Prince Philip, like Neath Port Talbot Hospital, which is going to be doing more planned work, while it can still go on providing those other outpatient and other facilities that people rely on. I think there is a way of using the idea. I don't think it will be as simple as giving over a whole hospital, but the idea that we concentrate facilities where operations aren't cancelled because emergency work comes in and overtakes it and so on—I think there's merit in that, and it's definitely part of the way the Welsh Government is planning for the recovery that we need in the future.