Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:33 pm on 14 December 2022.
Well, thanks. Listen, we've put in stretching targets; I'm confident that we are going to meet the target in many areas of specialisms and obviously, we're going to be pushing everybody to try. But we always said that orthopaedics in particular would be a particular challenge.
I think you've got to just understand that, actually, when your capital budget has been cut, effectively, which is what's happened, it's very difficult for us to establish new centres. And so, the option that you have available to you is to reorganise what you already have. So, we could theoretically say, 'Okay, we're going to stop doing accident and emergency in a particular hospital and we'll ring-fence that', but you're going to be a brave politician if you do that at the moment. And I'm certainly not in a position where I'm prepared to do that when the pressures on our accident and emergency are so great. But actually, what they've done in England is they've closed huge numbers of hospitals where they were previously providing accident and emergency, and we haven't done that in Wales. Now, that comes at a cost—it's very, very expensive, but actually, I just think there is a political decision that is being made here. And the public, I think, are keen to see most of those accident and emergency places remain open.