Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 1 March 2022.
Llywydd, there are no plans to remove any services from Withybush, including its A&E provision, prior to any wider changes that there may be made in health services in that part of Wales. I urge anybody who has an interest in the future of those services to engage directly with the health board, with its clinicians who are responsible for the development of plans that will put health services in that part of Wales on a sustainable footing for the next 20 years. Opportunities have come and gone in south-west Wales because people's attachment to the status quo prevented them from being willing to move forward with plans that would have resulted in major investment in those services. I do hope—. While understanding the attachment that people have to the services that they know and have used and are used to, I do hope that the opportunities that there may be there for that investment, in that 20-year future for south-west Wales, are not set to one side by people who allow their fears of the future to get in the way of the engagement—the positive engagement, the constructive engagement—that I think they would wish to see and that the health board intends to offer them.