Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:47 pm on 29 March 2023.
Thank you for bringing this motion forward today, Mark Isherwood. I'm very pleased to be able to take part in this debate, and very grateful for the work that was done by the cross-party group on palliative and hospice care in creating the report that forms the basis of this motion before us today. And, of course, we need to remember all of the individuals who are part of the consultation process for sharing their experiences before and during the pandemic. As the report does say, it's so important that the way in which we provide palliative care and end-of-life care, and the way that we plan that provision, changes as a result of learning from the pandemic's experiences. The pandemic did emphasise in a very clear way the major problems that we have at present with the palliative and end-of-life care systems that we have in Wales. Not only was the lack of robustness or resilience of the provision to be seen clearly, the lack of forward planning for a pandemic scenario leading to terrible bereavements and very difficult experiences for families across Wales, but we did also see that the charitable funding model was very fragile as well, and I'm afraid that we are not seeing the kinds of lessons that we would wish to see the Government learning.