7. Will the First Minister provide an update on service transformation to improve orthopaedic care across the NHS? OQ58350

Llywydd, the national orthopaedic board has undertaken a review of the orthopaedic services across Wales. The board has used the information from this review to propose a blueprint for the future of orthopaedic services. The strategy and the blueprint were circulated widely last week.

Diolch, First Minister, and before I just ask the rest of my supplementary, I'd just like to welcome some of the young carers in the gallery who I met earlier, and the truly inspirational work that they do, supporting their families.

First Minister, last week I heard first-hand, along with a number of my colleagues from across the Senedd, from Cymru Versus Arthritis and the Royal College of Surgeons about the transformational changes needed to improve patient outcomes in Wales. As you said, the national orthopaedic blueprint for services in Wales was published last week. The report was requested by the Welsh Government and it doesn't make easy reading. It highlights that elective orthopaedic and trauma services in Wales are in a perilous state of near collapse and that a failure to rapidly progress the recommendations of this report will inevitably lead to the conclusion that Wales cannot deliver safe elective orthopaedic care. It does recommend transformational service changes for orthopaedics in Wales.

I'm not here to blame anybody, First Minister; I'm here to find solutions to the problem, to solve it for people who are in life-debilitating pain. So, clearly things need to change. Your Government asked for this report, so will you today commit to implementing all the recommendations of the report and outline a timetable for their delivery, to work alongside the planned-care recovery plan, to give people in pain some light at the end of the tunnel? Diolch, Llywydd.

Well, Llywydd, we were glad to have the report, of course, having commissioned it, and we will want to consider very carefully its recommendations. There's to be an orthopaedic summit in August that the Minister will lead, and that will bring people, not just from the Welsh Government, but from the wider clinical community, around the table to consider the recommendations and to draw up a plan for implementation.

There are a series of things in the report that we think we will be able to move on in the short term: immediate actions in relation to high-volume and low-complexity procedures, for example, the formation of a day-case delivery network, and the work that is going on to create greater capacity, protected capacity for orthopaedic surgery at the Royal Glamorgan as a surgical hub for Cwm Taf Morgannwg, at Neath Port Talbot Hospital for expanded and protected capacity there, and work that's happened in the past at Prince Philip Hospital to make sure that planned surgery can be carried out in that way. Now, when the Minister met with the Royal College of Surgeons last week, there was a recognition that what we need to do in Wales is focus in the immediate future on better use of existing capacity and facilities, so that we can work on the proposals that the blueprint and the strategy provide.

Finally, question 8, Peter Fox.