8. When will the new national programme board for palliative and end-of-life care begin work on an implementation plan? OQ58171

The end-of-life care board is currently preparing to transition into the new programme board for end-of-life care from 1 July 2022. The work programme for the new board is currently in development, and it will support a range of end-of-life care enabling plans.

Thank you very much, Minister; I'm very pleased to hear that the work is starting so soon. Can you confirm to me, Minister, that there will be sufficient capacity within the board to ensure that the action plan happens quickly?

Thank you very much, and we certainly hope that will happen. Of course, we've already provided £2 million in order to ensure that we see a delivery in this area and, certainly, what we want to see in terms of the capacity on that board and the kinds of people we have on the board is that the new programme should take a more holistic approach to end-of-life care. We know that around 33,000 people die in Wales every year. We expect to see that increasing by 27 per cent by 2040, so providing good end-of-life care for people is going to be crucially important. It's important now, but, with that huge increase, it's also important that we provide more focus to it.

I thank the Minister.