Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 28 February 2023.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:46, 28 February 2023

Well, Llywydd, the immediate action is to appoint a small number of individuals to discharge the legal functions and to stabilise the organisation. You know that a chair has been appointed and there will be three other members alongside the chair, and their job in the short term is to stabilise the organisation, to concentrate on the appointment of a new chief executive.

What I would say to the leader of the opposition is this: I think one of the things that we have learned from the difficult experience from time to time at Betsi Cadwaladr, a board, by the way, which does go on, through its staff, providing successful treatment to thousands of patients every single day, is that reliance on heroic individuals, the idea that a new chair, by him or herself, will solve the problems of the organisation, or a new chief executive by her or himself is the answer—I think we've learnt that that is not a sufficient response to the way in which services over such a diverse population, with cultural differences between the north-west and the north-east, that our reliance on the idea that if you could only get the right person that that would solve the issues that have been there now over a persistent period of time, that, by itself, is not the answer. It will need something that is more fundamental than that, and the actions the Minister took yesterday and the statement she'll make later this afternoon will explain how that more fundamental reform of the organisation will be taken forward in the future.