8. What is the Welsh Government doing to improve A&E wait times and ambulance response times for people living in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr? OQ58876

The steps taken to reduce waiting time in A&E and to reduce ambulance response times include creating more ambulance capacity, delivering clinical streaming services, using virtual ward models and enhancement of same-day emergency care services.

I have heard of a number of cases similar to those expressed by Mabon ap Gwynfor in my region: one constituent waiting over 17 hours outside of A&E in an ambulance with stroke symptoms; another disabled constituent waiting for 12 hours outside of the A&E department for a bed after a fall; and even one man travelling back and forth to A&E to provide blankets and food for his elderly mother because she had to wait in a chair overnight.

In terms of the bigger picture, the situation in terms of response times in Hywel Dda is amongst the worst in Wales. In October, only 39.3 per cent of red calls were answered within the eight minutes. Six months ago, when I raised the same issue with you, you said that you didn't accept that there's an emergency or a crisis. Have you changed your mind now? And in terms of what's going to happen on 21 December in terms of the strike, do you expect or will you ask members of the armed forces or the police to step into the breach because of the strike action?

Thank you. I'm sure that Adam Price will have understood by now that part of the problem in getting people into the hospital is that we can't get them out. So, there are over 1,000 people in our hospitals who shouldn't be there. Part of the problem is because people can't be recruited in local government to work in the care services. So, that inter-relationship is something that everyone needs to understand, and that's why our priority, in our health and care team, the No. 1 priority, was to ensure that we pay the real living wage, and, for me, that's the most important thing in helping with recruitment. And as I've already said, there will be a further announcement as to what we have been doing in this area to work with local government, over many months, to help with that patient flow in getting people into our hospitals, because every bed is taken up, and that, of course, is a problem.

In terms of the strike action on the twenty-first, of course we are still making preparations for that. We will look at how things are going to work tomorrow; a great deal of preparation's been done already. At the moment, we don't intend to use the armed forces, unless that is truly necessary, unless there is a situation that would mean that there would be a serious problem in keeping the public safe. But we have been speaking, for example, to the police in terms of the police helping with resuscitation and so on. So, preparation has been done with the police also.

I thank the Minister for those responses during that question session.