5. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care: Access to Primary and Community Care Services

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:51 pm on 21 January 2025.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 4:51, 21 January 2025

I thank the Member for that. He makes an important point for those parts of Wales that are on the border. It's a more challenging landscape even than the one he describes, I think, in practice, because there isn't one NHS England approach to IT, any more than there is in many parts of the Welsh NHS. So, what you are effectively looking at is the IT arrangements that exist on a trust or a board level, so it's actually a more complex picture than even the one he paints.

What we are very keen to do from a digital perspective in Wales is twofold. The critical element to this, and I touched on this in the committee the other day, is to have in place a national digital architecture for Wales, so that, then, initiatives, either at a health board level or at a national level in Wales, can all conform to the journey that we want the system to be moving on. We aren't in that place yet, but it is an absolute priority to get that architecture in place. That will then allow a once-for-Wales approach for a certain number of interventions, which will help with the challenge that he's describing. It won't solve it, because there isn't a 'once for England' approach over the border, but it will contribute to solving that, at least.

But then there will be some things that I think—. You know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel constantly, do we? There are things that are existing—commercial applications—that are available for health boards or practices to purchase themselves, and the critical thing is that they all form part of that larger picture together, so I think that's important on the digital front.

I had the opportunity of talking to somebody recently at a dinner that I attended, and I'd had a day when I had been reminded throughout the day of the challenges in the NHS in Wales, and I was feeling, at the end of the day, a little bit low. I sat next to a woman at dinner and she explained to me that she was a nurse practitioner in a practice in Powys. She described how successful the model was, the morale and the things about that practice that had drawn her to work there, and I thought that that was a salutary reminder to us all, actually, that every day there are people choosing to work in the Welsh NHS who are committed, driven and have very, very high levels of motivation. So, for all of the challenges, and he's mentioned some of them today, I think it's really, really important that most people's experience is that they're going into work driven to help people and able to do that in a way that we're all grateful for.