Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 12 July 2022.
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.