Healthcare in West Wales

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 8 February 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:19, 8 February 2022

I thank Joyce Watson for bringing a voice of sanity to this discussion. If the health board is able to put forward a convincing business case, there is, as she says, major, major investment to be made in services in the south-west of Wales. It's not, as I know she will recognise, a plan simply focused on hospital services either. It is, in some ways, consistent with some of the points that Rhun ap Iorwerth was making earlier. It's a plan to make sure that as many services as possible are provided as close to where people live as possible by the strengthening of community facilities—facilities outside hospitals in places like the Cross Hands integrated health centre, in centres in Aberystwyth and developments that the health board plans in other parts of the health board area—and of course retaining services at both Withybush and at Glangwili, where the Welsh Government goes on investing in those buildings and in those services right up to the present day.

It was very good news—and I know that Joyce Watson, having been such a close supporter of all of this, will agree—on 25 January when the first baby was looked after in the special care baby unit that's now being provided at Glangwili, with £25 million worth of investment in those services. I completely agree with Joyce Watson that the health board must listen to views, of course, of all people within the health board area, that it must work with its clinicians, and then it can look forward to the sorts of investment that its plan would trigger, with services provided close to where people live in the community and with a hospital system that meets the needs of the twenty-first century.