4. What urgent action is the Welsh Government taking to cut ambulance waiting times? OQ58801

Llywydd, recruitment of further additional staff, reformed rota arrangements, reductions in sickness absence and new investment in technology to support clinical decision making are amongst the actions being taken to reduce ambulance waiting times.

Thank you, First Minister. I asked the health Minister the same question recently as to how this Government will cut ambulance waiting times. First Minister, it's been over a year now since your Government published its six goals for emergency care, and the situation has got worse, as I experienced myself recently and many of my constituents. None of this, of course, is the fault of hard-working paramedics, but the poor planning from this Labour Government. As I said to the health Minister, we haven't forgotten that the last health Minister said that it would be foolish to publish a plan for recovery whilst the pandemic was going on, and now we're paying the price.

First Minister, as we've heard already, we're now in winter and we know the situation will deteriorate, even without the prospect of a nurses' strike. I was in children's A&E with my son last week, and during the night there were 67 children to see and two doctors. Demand increases. First Minister, what immediate measures are you taking to ensure that our ambulance waiting times improve, and also, ultimately, that patients don't pay the ultimate price due to this Government's poor planning or lack of action?

Well, Llywydd, I read the Record of the Member's exchange with the Minister for health, and we have a reprise of exactly the same points that she made then this afternoon, and the answers haven't changed from the answers that she was given on that occasion.

I'll come to the substance of her question in a moment, but let me make it clear to the Chamber that I do not accept for a moment the suggestion that the Member makes that this is somehow a uniquely Welsh problem. The leader of the ambulance service in England, last week, said that people were dying in the English health service because of the problems of ambulances in the English NHS. So, the point I make is not at all as she does to try to make foolish comparisons, but to recognise the fact that everywhere the system is under enormous pressure, that everywhere clinicians are working extremely hard to try to tackle it, that everywhere Governments are trying to find solutions to a problem that is the same in Wales, and Scotland, and in England, and worse again in Northern Ireland. So, the idea, as she tried to put it to my colleague the health Minister, and she's tried to put it again this afternoon, that this is somehow a uniquely Welsh experience, is not true, she knows it's not true, and she shouldn't keep suggesting it. 

The actions that are being taken are the ones that the health Minister provided to her when she asked the question only a week or so ago. Mercifully, as a result of all the actions that have been taken, emergency admissions in Wales are down. They're down below pre-pandemic levels. They're down because of the actions that the Minister has taken. The Minister chaired a meeting of all health boards and the ambulance service only yesterday, to report on the way in which those measures are being taken forward now and how they will be taken forward further over this winter. That will include the urgent primary care centres that have been established now in all parts of Wales, and will soon cover the whole of the Welsh population, which means that people don't have to go to an emergency ambulance to be conveyed to a hospital when there are other closer-to-hand facilities that draw that demand away. The Member said herself that there were 67 children attending that department. How does she imagine a system is able to respond when you see demand of that escalating sort, other than by finding other ways in which that demand can be managed?

Now, I think it is a real tribute to the changes that have been made and that the Minister has led that, now, 4,000 999 calls every month in Wales are being successfully managed clinically without people ever having to leave their own homes. In the face of the sort of demand we are seeing, in the face of that combination of circumstances this winter—COVID, which hasn't gone away; flu, which is on the rise in Wales; respiratory syncytial virus, which is at extraordinary levels, particularly amongst the under-fives, and, I imagine, was responsible for quite a significant number of those children being taken to an A&E department—the system works as hard as it can to remain resilient in the face of those extraordinary challenges.