Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 25 October 2022.
In my first question, First Minister, I asked you to support a commitment that the Labour health spokesperson in Westminster said that Labour would deliver, and you said that was undeliverable. In the second question, I asked you to give a commitment and a road map to wiping out the two-year waits here in the NHS. I've been contacted by a constituent this week, Richard Cooper, who got told that, to have his hip operations on the NHS here in Wales—because he required both hips to be done—he could expect a four to five-year wait for those procedures to be undertaken. He had to access his own private savings to go to a clinic in Poland to have the procedure undertaken. Now, I can't get a commitment out on GP response times, I can't get a commitment on two-year waits out of you; what is the advice I should tell my constituents, like Richard Cooper, who are having to access their own savings, their pension pots, because you can't deliver a health service that can meet the needs of the people of Wales?