Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:03 pm on 8 March 2022.
Thank you. I do know a thing or two about the health service and investing in choices around our future workforce. Actually, it's one of the things we have consistently done. We've always, in my time as the Minister, but also Eluned Morgan as the new Minister, invested the maximum amount possible in terms of our future health workforce that our system can actually successfully train. What we've also done is we've made not only the choice that we can certainly make to keep things like the bursary, to make sure people don't drop out, but also to try to make sure that there are some conditionalities, so that people who receive that extra support that isn't available across the border are then committed to working within our system as well. We do know we're going to need more people in our health and care sector in the future. That's partly because we have the success story of having an ageing population, it's partly because we know we're going to lose some of our staff following the pandemic—people who will want to leave their careers early or not work full time for as long as they otherwise would have done. And we're also, I'm afraid, confident we're going to have greater health and care need coming into our system as well.
The reason we're investing in the incomes of people in our social care sector, and in particular in the residential and domiciliary care sector, is that we actually want to see people paid properly for the work that they do. The real living wage is the first step to doing that. You're absolutely right to point out that investing in those workers will lead to that money going into local families and local communities. These are not people who are going to hide their wealth in the Seychelles or some other jurisdiction; they're going to spend it locally on their families. So, yes, you can expect to see us continuing to invest. In line with the plan, it's not just the point that healthcare conditions should not be a barrier to work, but that the health and social care system itself as a major employer has a major role to play in delivering the ambitions of this plan and creating a fairer, stronger, greener Wales.