9. What assessment has the Welsh Government undertaken of NHS staffing levels in mid and west Wales? OQ58544

Thank you very much. The Hywel Dda University Health Board workforce is now at record levels, but we recognise the workforce challenges in mid and west Wales alongside significant demand pressures on services.

Thank you very much. Last week, as I said, I had the pleasure of meeting with the RCN here in the Senedd to discuss their latest report, and in the evening I had the pleasure of meeting a number of nurses from the mid and west Wales region. I heard about the huge work pressures that they're facing: a lack of staff; insufficient pay; morale being low; and they said that they were exhausted, that they were disheartened because they couldn't do their work as they wished to. There are also strategic problems, such as insufficient planning to retain nurses, insufficient recruitment and planning of support for the workforce, and so on. So, alongside the low wages and challenging working environment, I'm not surprised that so many nurses are leaving the sector. The problem is that, across the Hywel Dda area, there are around 540 registered nurse vacancies. This is amongst the highest in Wales. This health board also has one of the highest levels of nurses employed via agencies. This has increased 46 per cent over the past year and costs close to £29 million. So, bearing all of this in mind, Minister, what steps will you be taking to put together a strategy for retaining more nurses in the profession?

Thank you very much. This is an area that I have asked my officials to focus on. It's difficult to do it, because, as you can imagine, in terms of retention, if you have 1,000 people off sick with COVID, what are you going to do to fill those vacancies? How are you going to take the pressure off those people who have to make up for that sick leave? And if we don't use agency nurses, then the pressures are going to be even greater. Now, I'm very unhappy in terms of how much we spend on agency staff at the moment, and that's why I've asked HEIW to focus on this work and to ensure that we work with the unions, quickly, to ensure that we're in a better position. But, at the end of the day, what's needed is to convince more nurses to remain and to continue with training provision. But I have to say that the staffing levels in Hywel Dda are now at unprecedented levels. Eleven thousand people work for the health board, and, in terms of nurses, there are 136 more than there were three years ago. So, there are more staff. But the demand is increasing constantly, and that's the problem. We have an ageing population and so the pressures are greater. So, it is important that we do that strategic planning for the future workforce.

Finally, Russell George.

Thank you, Llywydd. Minister, during the recent Petitions Committee debate, you said,

'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.'

What I'm just trying to rectify, myself, and give you an opportunity to expand and clarify, is that the Welsh Government—yourself—claim there are various recruitment strategies, including international recruitment as well, and you talk about record investment in education and training programmes. So, surely, if that is the case, those two don’t really sit with each other. I wonder if you can, perhaps, give some further context to your comments during the Petitions Committee debate.

Okay, so, when you write a law, you've got to comply with the law, and if the law says, 'You've got have x many nurses in a particular ward', you've got to comply with that law. If you can't do that because you don’t have the nurses, you're in breach of the law. So, what's the point of writing a law that you know you can't comply with? And at the moment, it's really difficult for us to comply because we don't have enough nurses.

So, what we need, and I accept that—. We're already doing a lot in terms of workforce recruitment. We're training more than we’ve ever trained before. We're doing international recruitment. But I do think that what we need to do now is to focus on retention, because we're losing people as fast as we’re training them. So, that's the area that I think that we need to focus on. And if we can do that we'll be in a much, much better position. These people are exhausted. They've been working their socks off for two years. So, we do need to give them the support—so, working with the unions and with HEIW to really understand what is the pressure and what more can we do to take the pressure off them—and then we'll be in a position to starting writing laws that we can comply with.

I thank the Minister.