Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:56 pm on 13 June 2023.

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Photo of Llyr Gruffydd Llyr Gruffydd Plaid Cymru 1:56, 13 June 2023

And hopefully with equitable access, wherever you live in Wales. Your Government has often asserted that there are more people working in the Welsh NHS than ever before. I don’t dispute that overall picture, but it’s important, I think, to scrutinise the granular detail to understand why increases in the total number of staff employed in the NHS haven't led to any discernible improvement in workforce pressures. Plaid Cymru recently submitted freedom of information requests to each of the Welsh health boards asking for a year-by-year breakdown of full-time equivalent staffing levels for each staff group between March 2015 and 2023. A noticeable trend in the responses has been the extent to which levels of administrative and clerical staff have increased, whilst the levels of medical and dental staff have gone down. For example, in the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board area, while full-time equivalent levels of administrative and clerical staff rose by 37 per cent, there’s been an almost 20 per cent decrease in medical and dental staff over the same period, and that’s a picture that’s replicated in Velindre and other places as well. Does that not show, First Minister, that your Government needs a more targeted and strategic approach to solving this crisis in our NHS workforce, rather than simply relying on throwing more bureaucrats at the problem?

Minister

Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.