Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 14 December 2022.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 2:36, 14 December 2022

Well, 'Happy Christmas' to you as well, Russell. [Laughter.] And I'm very pleased that that was your last question this year. Look, I've had better years, if I'm honest, and obviously, there are a lot of things that I wish that we'd seen improvements on and I wish we'd gone faster with some areas. Because for me, the key thing is to keep an eye on what is it that the public needs, and what they need is care in the right place at the right time. And I regret that we haven't been able to do more of that. And there are valid reasons for that: we have had a COVID pandemic; we have had massive inflationary impacts that have sucked £200 million out of the NHS budget; we have had massive, massive increases in demand; and we haven't seen some of the progress that I would have liked to have seen in relation to waiting times. But we're not at the point yet where we've hit the deadline, and I, as the Minister responsible, will continue to press the health boards, to make sure that they do everything they can to make sure that they work towards meeting those targets that we made very, very clear in April that we expect them to meet.