Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:56 pm on 6 December 2022.
Llywydd, let me give the Member just two examples of the actions we can take in the immediate term. One—and there'll be a statement on this next week by the Minister for Health and Social Services—will be to increase the bed capacity of the NHS over this winter, and that's both bed spaces in hospitals, but community services as well, so that people who are in hospital today can be back home or being looked after in the community, and we will provide details next week of the number of bed and bed-equivalent places that we've already been able to create for this winter, and the more that we expect to come. That will relieve some of the pressures, particularly those pressures in emergency departments that the leader of the opposition referred to.
In terms of staffing, let me say that I welcome the signs from the UK Government that they are about to review the pension arrangements, which have got in the way of so many doctors continuing to work in the NHS, not just in Wales, but across the United Kingdom. He will know that if you are a GP, for example, you hit a point where your pension pot that you have built up is so heavily taxed that you're practically paying to be in work, and very understandably we have seen a whole swathe of people retiring early from the health service in Wales because the financial circumstances created by the pension rules mean that it's simply not viable for them to continue. Now, I've seen reports this week that that is being actively revisited by the UK Government, and that they are about to propose changes to those pension arrangements that would allow people to come back into the workplace who didn't wish to leave it. They may not want to come back full time, we understand all of that, but they want to make their contribution. And if those pension arrangements change, we can be sure that there will be people in Wales who are not in the workplace at the moment and who could, as part of those short-term measures, come back into the workforce to reinforce the people who are working so hard, and under very difficult circumstances, and with three years of really challenging times behind them, to help sustain them in the jobs that they do.