Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 28 February 2023.
The King's Fund that was working with the health board on governance, this is how they described things in the winter of 2020, when you decided it was fit to take the health board out of special measures: the fund observed deteriorating executive behaviour, with individual executive team members criticising each other to the chair and independent members, deepening independent member concern about executive team cohesion. How, on the basis of that informed judgment on behalf of the King's Fund, who were working with the board at the time, could you decide that it was right to take them out of special measures?
I have to say to the First Minister, this is part of a wider pattern, isn't it, of a catastrophic mismanagement on the part of this Government of healthcare. And after 25 years of responsibility for delivering healthcare in Wales, isn't it true that you've simply run out of ideas? You're throwing money at short-term, sticking-plaster solutions, with ever diminishing returns. Are you prepared, in looking at a root-and-branch review and reform of Betsi Cadwaladr, are you prepared to consider the option to break up the board completely and have a different structure, as Plaid Cymru has consistently advocated, rather than simply, once again, rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship?