Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 10 May 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:43, 10 May 2022

I thank the Member for those important points. He is right to say that we have to train the GP workforce that we need for the future. We have a record number of GP trainees in Wales. We had a period not that long ago when we struggled to fill the number of training places that we had available. Now we're oversubscribed for training places, and that, of course, is being taken into account by the body that plans workforce provision for the health service here in Wales in the future. I hope the Member will have seen the latest number of GPs that we have in Wales, which rose again in the figures published just around Christmas time. Whereas the number of GPs in the English health service has been falling, in Wales we are managing to sustain the number we have and to increase it as well.

The nature of the GP workforce is changing, Llywydd. People are choosing to work part-time hours, and that reflects the nature of people who are being recruited into it. The old patterns—the old patterns—of people buying a stake in a business, thinking of themselves being there for 30 or 40 years, many young people who are becoming GPs don't see their futures in that way, and we have to craft futures for them that means that Wales continues to attract the people that we need. I make one other point, which I make every time this is raised with me: primary care is more than GPs. And while GPs are fundamental, they oversee the system, they have a level of expertise that means that they are responsible for the wider team, the future is at least as much about making sure we have all those other components of the team—the practice nurses, the paramedics, the physiotherapists—all those people that will work alongside GPs to make sure that people in Wales get the primary care service they need.