Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 1 May 2024.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan
Labour
2:22,
1 May 2024
Diolch yn fawr. I know that the former First Minister led the way, when he was the health Minister, in terms of making sure that we use the whole team around primary care, certainly in terms of general medical services, and I'm grateful to you for that. But, you're absolutely right, we haven't seen that pattern develop in quite the same way in relation to dentistry, and that is something that we are determined to address. There was an issue, as I suggested in my answer, where there was a technical issue stopping dental therapists, for example, from opening and closing those NHS courses of treatment. That's now been changed, so there is at least an opportunity now for that door to be opened.
So, the issue then is: where are these dental therapists? Who are they? How do we train them? This was one of the things that I focused on very early in my tenure, because I recognised that, if we fundamentally want to look at the model, then you can't do that without actually providing the numbers. If you're inverting the triangle, you need to make sure that you've got enough people in training. So, certainly, it was an instruction I gave to Health Education and Improvement Wales a couple of years ago, and, certainly, I can assure you that we have doubled the number of dental therapists in training since 2023. So, things are getting better, but we've got a long way to go.
I'm also really pleased that, the first graduates to qualify from Bangor University's dental hygiene programme, they're also coming on stream. I guess the next challenge for us is to make sure—obviously, we need to increase those numbers, but also to make sure that once they're trained they don't go off to the private sector. That is something that we need to find an answer to as well.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
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.
