Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 12 October 2022.
Well, we have been training people, and we have seen 54 per cent more people working in the NHS over the past 20 years. In Betsi now, we see that almost 20,000 people work for the health board, and there are plans to recruit 380 more during the next two years. And the idea there is that the board wants to get local people to take those posts, so they have a plan for that. And what is important therefore is that that planning is done. I had a meeting with the General Medical Council last week. They demonstrated exactly how many people are going to leave because they're going to retire—'retirement', that's the word.
So, what is important now is that we take all of those figures on board. You know that the Labour Party nationally have said that they are eager to see far more doctors being trained. And certainly, in terms of nurse training, as you heard from the previous question, we are already training far more nurses than we were in the past; more than 69 per cent more than we have in the past. The difficulty is is that we have to retain people in the system; that's where the tension is. And we understand that there has been great deal of pressure on these people over the past two years.