Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care – in the Senedd at 2:48 pm on 5 June 2024.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan
Labour
2:48,
5 June 2024
Thanks very much. I'm afraid there are longer waits, you're quite right, for non-urgent cases. It's all categorised according to some very medical and technical issues. The average response wait for a red call is about 15 minutes, but, obviously, this was a different category. I'll look into the issue of why somebody was sent to the wrong place. I think that is a fairly fundamental problem. That doesn't sound right to me. So, obviously, there does need to be some training in relation to that if that is happening. I will look into that. What I can't commit to, obviously, is extending lab hours. All of that means massive additional finance, which we don't have at the moment. We simply don't have the additional finance. Anything that asks for more resources that goes into a particular area is really, really difficult for us at the moment. But I certainly will look into why they were sent to the wrong place.FootnoteLink
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.
