3. What assessment has the Minister made of the Royal College of Nursing's '2022 Nursing in Numbers' report in relation to north Wales? OQ58531

The RCN’s report outlines the challenges placed on our workforce by the COVID pandemic and a global shortage of nursing staff. I am committed to ensuring that Wales has the right number of nurses and healthcare staff to meet the care needs of our people.

Thank you, Minister, for your initial answer there. And just for the record, just to be clear, my brother and sister are both nurses in the national health service as well.

At the end of last month, Minister, I had the pleasure of attending the Royal College of Nursing's Listen to Nursing event at the Senedd here, sponsored by your party colleague, Buffy Williams. And it was great to meet those nursing staff, who do continue to provide real high-quality care, day after day. During this event, the RCN released their '2022 Nursing in Numbers' report, which showed that, in Wales, there are currently 2,900 nursing vacancies, and in the area that I represent, in north Wales, in Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, there are 650 nursing vacancies up in north Wales at the moment. So, I'm sure, Minister, you'd agree with me, and as you initially outlined, that there is a challenge in recruiting and retaining nurses in Wales. So, in light of this, what further and specific action do you think that you and Welsh Government could carry out to, first of all, recruit more nurses, and, also, to make sure that we're retaining those hard-working nurses that we already have?

Thanks very much. Well, you'll be aware that we're investing record levels in terms of training for the NHS—£262 million just in this financial year. The number of training places for nurses has increased over 69 per cent since 2016—that's 2,396 more nurses that have come on to the system. So, part of the problem is that we've got to actually make sure that we retain people—that's the real challenge as far as I'm concerned. I've asked Health Education and Improvement Wales to work with the RCN to look at what we can do in this space to help retention.

I think it's also worth emphasising that we've recruited an additional 400 international nurses this year. And I was very pleased, on Monday, to meet the health Minister for Kerala in India, who we're going to now be making a partnership with, so that we can recruit directly from Kerala, so that we can have a direct route to qualified, high-quality students. And it was good to hear, actually, that—. Because you always feel quite guilty about taking nurses from a developing country, although India's pretty developed now in many parts, but I think what's important is that we understand what is their motivation. And they were very clear to me that they are happy to train them up, they're happy to send them over. And what happens is that the remittances are sent back to Kerala, and that's why it's in their interest also for us to take on these nurses. So, there are some plans in place, we know that we've got a lot further to go, but this is a global pressure that everybody's really facing.