We can’t all behave as we like and blame someone else the minute it all goes wrong, says First Minister

First Minister Mark Drakeford has said that he does not blame the NHS staff in Wales for waiting times but rather those who could alleviate problems. Alcohol, obesity and diabetes were the main areas he mentioned as contributory factors to problems, which were within the control of the population.

Responding to a question from Mark Isherwood MS on the NHS in Wales the First Minister said: “You look at the percentage of the people who end up in an A&E department because they have drunk too much. It is shockingly high. For people we rely on who work in A&E departments to spend an awful lot of their time responding to harm that need not to have happened.

“It is the people who work there who seem to get the blame when those pressures become very hard to manage. Responsibility is shared amongst everybody. If we want the health service in North Wales and elsewhere to be able to go on responding to those people who fall in for reasons that they themselves can do nothing about every one of us has to do some things to relieve the health service of the burden it carries of people that end up needing its help for reasons that were avoidable. That’s not just alcohol abuse it is the whole obesity agenda the diabetes agenda, it is a co-production agenda if I can use a term that Mark Isherwood has very consistently advocated for on the floor of the Senedd.

It is a partnership between the service and the population it serves in which the population does not believe that we can behave as we like and the minute it all goes wrong it becomes the responsibility of somebody else.

Watch the video of the Committee  Scrutiny of the First Minister here: