6. Debate on petition P-06-1276, 'Extend section 25B of the Nurse Staffing Levels Act (Wales) 2016'

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:02 pm on 28 September 2022.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 4:02, 28 September 2022

Thanks very much. Well, I have asked HEIW to do some work on this, so I'll come on to that in a second, if you don't mind.

The second point that I think is really important to understand is, even if those tools were available for every nursing situation, it's simply inaccurate to suggest that extending section 25B to all of those areas would result in giving Wales 'the full team of nurses', as the petition puts it, and that's simply because, at the moment, those nurses don't exist. So, the nursing staff shortage is an issue that's being experienced globally; it's not just a Welsh issue. The World Health Organization has estimated that nursing and midwifery vacancies currently represent more than 50 per cent of the global shortage of health workers. Now, we know that there are significant registered nursing vacancies already in our health boards and across our care sectors, and this is not an issue that would be directly addressed by any extension to section 25B of the Nurse Staffing Levels (Wales) Act.

Now, we're already doing a huge amount to recruit and to train nurses. The number of commissioned training places has increased by 69 per cent to 2,396 since 2016, so that would take us a long way towards those 3,000 that you have identified. But we need to recognise that the problem is retention, and that's why I have asked HEIW to do more work on retention specifically of nursing staff. I'm delighted that, on Friday, I'll be going to Aberystwyth to open the new centre where we will be training more nurses in Wales, and I think it's really important that we understand also—. And I recognise that we're spending too much money now on agency nurses, so I've asked again for some work to be done on that. How do we bring the cost of agency nurses down? It's not straightforward. If you give our current nurses more money, then the agency staffing costs will go up and we've still got gaps. So, none of it is straightforward, but I've asked some key people to help, come up with some ideas for how we can—