Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 11 October 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:53, 11 October 2022

Well, those concerns of the individual need to be taken up with the clinicians who are responsible for her care, because what the leader of the opposition has said would clearly be unacceptable, and those who were responsible need to be able to discuss with her how she now feels and what they can do to put that right.

I am of course familiar, Llywydd, with the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales report into the emergency department at University Hospital Wales. It's important to emphasise, isn't it, that the report found that the majority of patients reported being treated with dignity and respect and that they were receiving good emergency care. That's what the report says. But the report also says that there were numerous environmental factors impacting on the ability of staff to provide dignified care. And let me be clear this afternoon, Llywydd; it is absolutely unacceptable to me to read a report that says that an emergency department is dirty, that an emergency department doesn't have enough chairs for people to sit on, and that an emergency department is unable to provide access to water for people who are waiting.

Look, I understand the system is under huge pressure, with unprecedented numbers of people presenting, and staff who are under the most huge pressures for everything they've gone through in recent years. That does not excuse a health board for failing to deliver on those very basic environmental standards. Now, today, the health Minister has announced a further £2 million to help health boards across Wales with those small, basic things that make such a difference to the patient experience and to staff experience as well. It's hard enough working in the accident and emergency department at the Heath hospital without feeling that the physical conditions in which you are working are dirty and unacceptable. So, the Member asks 'What can the Welsh Government do?' Well, we will find another sum of money that we will provide to those emergency departments, and then I absolutely look to the people who are paid to manage those organisations to make sure that those basic standards are properly observed and that the physical conditions in which staff have to work and patients have to present themselves are not of the sort that were described in that report.