UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 401-vii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

WELSH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

THE PROVISION OF CROSS-BORDER PUBLIC SERVICES FOR WALES

Thursday 12 June 2008

RT HON RHODRI MORGAN AM,
MS ANN LLOYD, MR TONY PARKER and MR MARK DRAKEFORD

Evidence heard in Public Questions 523 - 636

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee

on Thursday 12 June 2008

Members present

Dr Hywel Francis, in the Chair

Mrs Siān C James

Mr David Jones

Mr Martyn Jones

Alun Michael

Albert Owen

Mark Pritchard

Hywel Williams

Mark Williams

________________

Witnesses: Rt Hon Rhodri Morgan AM, First Minister, Ms Ann Lloyd, Head of Department of Health and Social Services, Mr Tony Parker, Director of Rail and New Roads, Mr Mark Drakeford, Special Adviser to the First Minister, Welsh Assembly Government, gave evidence.

Q523 Chairman: Welcome to the Welsh Affairs Committee, First Minster. Could you, for the record, introduce yourself and your colleagues, please.

Mr Morgan: I am Rhodri Morgan. I am First Minister. On my left is Ann Lloyd, the Head of the Department of Health and Social Services. On my right is Mark Drakeford, Special Adviser, and further to Ann's left is Tony Parker, Director of Rail and New Roads in the Department of Economy and Transport.

Q524 Chairman: Thank you very much. Perhaps I could begin by placing on record our appreciation of you coming here today and also the fact that there has been great interest on both sides of the border for this inquiry. We have received a great deal of written evidence already, and I thank you and your colleagues for providing some of that written evidence. Minister, perhaps I could begin, first of all, by asking a question which I pose to everyone when they come before us on this particular inquiry: What impact has devolution had on the provision of cross-border services for Wales?

Mr Morgan: Transparency, I suppose, because you have a very transparent process in the Assembly in Cardiff. It has encouraged people to question openly and to scrutinise decisions, and anything which excites any amount of controversy will probably get 50 times as much attention in the media and from the political cross-party cut-and-thrust compared to the previous days of the old Welsh Office. Looking back, for instance, to decisions before devolution and trying to compare them with what happened after devolution - which I suppose is at the heart of your question - and looking to my time as a Member of Parliament, when the North Wales Cancer Centre was opened in Glan Clwyd Hospital there was a big row about whether that was going to make the Clatterbridge Hospital, on which two-thirds of North Wales previously depended, non viable, but it was a row which really was confined to a couple of MPs in the House of Commons and that was it: it died a death there and the North Wales Cancer Centre simply proceeded. I think if that were to happen now, there would be a much bigger hullabaloo about it. Likewise, a bit earlier than that, in the very early 1990s, a decision was made to have treatment centres to try to shorten the waiting lists in Wales (two were in South Wales: Tregaron(?) Hospital for hips and knees and Bridgend Hospital for hernias and other general surgery, and then Bangor for cataracts involving journeys from North to South Wales both ways), and, again there was not much of a hullabaloo about it: it was a decision that the Health Minister at the old Welsh Office made and that was I, there were a few questions in the House and it died a death. It did not come off as a scheme, but there was no political controversy about it. Because you have the Assembly as an additional scrutiny body, if these decisions were taken now, would be subjected to much greater degree of scrutiny.

Q525 Chairman: In the last five years, where would you say the major points of divergence have been? Clearly there are beginning to be significant divergences, seemingly in health and certainly in education. Could you outline for us where the divergences are? Do these provide opportunities, challenges or real threats?

Mr Morgan: Divergence is inherent in devolution, is it not? It is not that it was impossible to have divergence pre-devolution - an individual Secretary of State like John Redwood or Peter Walker, famously, could decide to be to the right or to the left of the existing government and could run Wales in the way that they chose - but since devolution the agenda is simply now determined by the perception of Welsh needs by who ever happens to be in charge of Wales at the time, and they will suit the agenda to Welsh needs and then in England they will suit the agenda to England's needs. In relation to a kind of choice‑oriented agenda, I suppose we would say that we have not chosen to go down that route, but in England the Department of Health has, and the Department of Education to a limited extent has, through Academy Schools, but then we do not have the big metropolitan areas where you can be choosing where to go to school. Normally in Wales, for geographical reasons, you will simply have a local school and that will be it. To some extent it is the geography; to some extent it is where is the centre of gravity of political opinion in relation to an agenda such as choice in the provision of public services.

Q526 Chairman: It has been suggested to us that with the advent of democratic devolution in Wales and the ability to formulate and shape our own policies, there has been a drift potentially towards introspection - a kind of "Fortress Wales" attitude. Could you make an observation on that in the context of what is seemingly happening specifically in health and the apparent shift towards an in-Wales solution?

Mr Morgan: The two examples I gave you in answer to your first question I think will give the lie to that. From time to time and initiative will be taken, such as was done in Peter Walker's time as regards the treatment centres, which involved forming a Fortress Wales (that is, patients from South Wales would go to Bangor for cataracts; patients from North Wales would go to Bridgend Hospital and Tregaron(?) Hospital for and knees or piles and hernias and varicose veins, and so forth) whereas, geographically, it might be said that that is a long journey for relatively simple routine treatments. The Glan Clwyd Cancer Centre, which I will mention a little bit later, cutting off two-thirds of North Wales' patients from Clatterbridge; the one-third in the Wrexham area continue to go to Christie. I do not think we have done anything that you could describe as introspective, "Fortress Wales" oriented policy comparable to those two initiatives which took place before democratic devolution. I think they give the lie to that allegation, wherever it has come from.

Q527 Chairman: You would be happy for me to say that one of our greatest assets in Wales is the fact that we are next to England and we should acknowledge that.

Mr Morgan: I have always said that. Very closely integrated. It will be different in North Wales. Obviously the population of North Wales is one thirteenth of the population of the north-west of England, therefore the relationship with even the small/medium centres, like Chester, but certainly with Merseyside and Greater Manchester in the provision of health services is totally different from the relationship between South Wales, which has two million people, and the greater greater Bristol area, which would also have about two million people. Therefore, where Bristol will have some services which are supra‑regional, South Wales will have one or two services, where people travel in from Bristol, or from Devon and Cornwall sometimes - to Morriston for plastic surgery, but it is pretty rare that way - and there is a little bit of a flow to Bristol. From mid Wales, of course, there is some flow to Birmingham, as well as flows to Hereford. But, yes, the availability of services which are reasonably close by is a great advantage, because it means we do not have to invest, but from time to time specialist services become capable of being repatriated. The big one that is going on now is the PET scanner. At this moment, everyone in Wales has to go to Cheltenham for PET scanner treatment. I am not sure about whether North Wales people go to Cheltenham as well. Certainly there have been some very high profile cases. For example, a patient arrived in Cheltenham after about a six-hour taxi journey only to find the battery had run down - I know it sounds incredible - in the PET scanner, and they were sent back in the taxi. But the PET scanner in Cardiff will be open fairly soon. That is a major £16 million initiative for academic research, plus repatriation of a specialist diagnostic facility costing a huge sum of money.

Q528 Albert Owen: What is a PET scanner?

Mr Morgan: I think it stands for positron emission tomography.

Q529 Chairman: Just in case I missed the thread of your argument: I did pick up at the beginning that you were asserting the fact and acknowledging that for the foreseeable future the East-West link or connection is to be reasserted, and there is no such thing as an in-Wales solution to all problems in the Health Service.

Mr Morgan: I am not sure about the use of the word "reasserted" - but no change, except that from time to time specialist services become mainstream services and then can be repatriated; the PET scanner being one example. Deep brain stimulation is now being commissioned from English providers, but Edwina Hart has said that she thinks it may be possible within a year or so for deep brain stimulation to be available in Wales. Provision for eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia) is currently by private providers, at the Priory Clinic in Bristol. We are in investing in an eating disorders clinic in Bridgend, because there has been such a hue and cry about why everyone has to go to Bristol. Again, that will not cover North Wales, because this 1:13 relationship of population means that a dependency on Manchester, Liverpool, maybe Chester and Shrewsbury, et cetera, is much more likely to last for a much wider range of services, but occasionally you get examples like Glan Clwyd and the North Wales Cancer Centre. I cannot foresee one - I do not know of one which is on offer at the moment - but you are not saying there will never be a further investment in health services similar to what was done in the mid-1990s in Glan Clwyd.

Q530 Chairman: I get the drift of what you are saying, that you will judge each case on its merits and there is a pragmatic approach

Mr Morgan: Yes.

Q531 Mark Pritchard: Given the repatriation comment you have just made First Minister, would you say it is either an aspiration or a policy?

Mr Morgan: It is so pragmatic, I find it difficult to categorise. If something became sufficiently mainstream that you could and should provide it locally - and sometimes that will mean locally in North Wales and sometimes it will mean locally in South Wales - then you make a decision, as with deep brain stimulation. We think we can do that. With the PET scanner that was partially driven by academic research and the availability of money from the Government in London towards it, as well as the fact that it is a clinical facility - it is both. Each decision is almost sui generis.

Q532 Mark Pritchard: Are you saying to us that overall you do not have an aspiration for Wales to have more in-Wales health solutions?

Mr Morgan: I would anticipate that certain specialist treatments become mainstream. When they become mainstream, you have to give serious consideration as to whether you can provide them effectively, safely, clinically; that they would be absolutely at the cutting edge, the best, et cetera; and then you need shorter travelling journeys.

Q533 Mr Martyn Jones: What input do you personally have in policy decisions regarding where a particular service is delivered on what side of the border?

Mr Morgan: It depends what you mean by policy decisions. On policy decisions which become financial decisions and/or have resource implications, and the usual budget to and fro between the Finance Minister, the Health Minister, the Education Minister, and so on, there will be times when I am drawn in and there will be times when I am not drawn in.

Q534 Mark Pritchard: But not all the time.

Mr Morgan: Not all the time, no.

Q535 Alun Michael: Earlier in your evidence, you referred to the greater divergence and the greater transparency that comes with the advent of devolution. It also means, therefore, that more is known, does it not? It also exposes anomalies where they exist and unintended consequences sometimes when there is a decision on the two sides of the border. We have heard evidence from both sides about the absolutely crucial importance of the need for simplicity and clarity from the point of view of the individual families, the people who are seeking to access services. Against that background, clearly you have a pivotal role in developing and maintaining the relationship between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Government of Westminster.

Mr Morgan: It is in my job description.

Q536 Alun Michael: How do you work at trying to achieve coherence and a minimum of those anomalies to which I have referred?

Mr Morgan: Decisions are partially technical, partially financially driven, and partially politically driven. It is in my job description to lead on matters which relate to the relationship between Westminster and Wales. But that does not mean that individual ministers do not also have their opposite numbers, and sometimes quite small issues can have a political salience which means that I have to get involved. I think PhD's will be written on this subject in the future, but I cannot analyse it today to say that there is a level of radar and above that radar the First Minister will be involved. It is not like that. It is too unpredictable.

Q537 Alun Michael: I was looking rather more at how you carry forward a policy of coherence on both sides of the border. For instance, there has been a lot of discussion about the role of improved protocols between the two governments.

Mr Morgan: Yes.

Q538 Alun Michael: And also improved protocols, for instance, between the health services in Wales and the West Midlands, to take one example. We heard evidence from bishops as well as from health experts, in some very good evidence. That takes you to a policy level, but it also takes you to the practicalities.

Mr Morgan: Yes, it does. These are very practical issues. We have a concordat going back to 2001 which specified that not any one of the four administrations running health in the UK - practically it applies more to England and Wales than it does to Scotland and Northern Ireland, so not one of the four, but really it is not one of the two - should do anything which has an adverse consequence, either financially or in terms of patient care, on another administration, and that, if they do, financial compensation should be provided if there is a financial adverse consequence. The row which will we are all aware of and which you are all of aware of - it has produced a lot of newsprint and a lot of coverage - over the new payment by results system which came in in England about two or two-and-a-half years ago now - and the row was in the build-up period to that - was in our minds not in keeping with the concordat. Although we have made it so now - we have made it to be so now, after a lot of is patient negotiation - initially certain English Trusts were not abiding by the guidance given by the Department of Health and were trying to charge their Welsh LHBs extra, contrary to the DoH guidance which was in line with the concordat. We were asking the DoH, "You enforce your guidance," and of course they had no motivation to enforce the guidance because if they had enforced the guidance then that would have accelerated the compensation based on the 2001 concordat. That is a practical issue then about the negotiations over sums of money. It is £2 million here, it is £10 million there, but everybody tries to say, "But there is a concordat. You have to abide by the concordat," but making sure it sticks was very difficult. But it is okay now. There are no problems at this moment in 2008-09.

Q539 Albert Owen: This may sound naļve, but I was not here in the House at the time the first Government of Wales Bill went through. They were heady days and there was excitement about devolution, but were these cross-border issues given sufficient attention during the passage of that Bill, or was it the case that these belonged to the old Wales Office, so that is what the Assembly will run, this is what the rest is, and then there is this grey area and it is not just increased transparency now, but it is that many of these problems that were not dealt with at that time are coming home to roost.

Mr Morgan: I do not recognize that description at all. As Michael put it, more is known now but more is challenged now. That is the issue: the scrutiny mechanism is so much stronger. People have interpreted that scrutiny mechanism as being the age of challenging either the minister or the man or woman in the white coat, who is either running the Health Service, as Ann would testify, or providing the clinical side of the Health Service. People now do not accept a decision by a minister. When Ian Grist in the 1990s said, "Okay, patients from North Wales will travel to South Wales to have their hips and knees done, or their piles and hernias and varicose veins done, and patients from South Wales will go to Bangor to have their cataracts done," people said, "Well, he's the minister, he makes the decisions. Okay, we may not like the five-hour journey in an ambulance, but if that's what he says, that's what we're going to do." That would never happen now because they would challenge it. They would say, "We don't like that." It is just the mood music. It is not just devolution; there is a much more challenging mood among the public now about all decisions by all ministers. I am sure the setting up of the North Wales Cancer Centre at Glan Clwyd would have produced a much bigger row now, testing whether you can guarantee that you are really going to be able to recruit cancer specialists into North Wales when you have never done it before, when we have a very good service in Clatterbridge and an even better one in Christie for outpatients from the Wrexham area.

Q540 Albert Owen: I accept that within Wales there is greater scrutiny - I accept that and I very much welcome it. It is far more democratic. But I was asking whether the protocols and concordat of 2001 should have been done during the passage of the Government of Wales Act.

Mr Morgan: I think the Government of Wales Act - and Alun will correct me about this - was to set up the machinery for establishing concordats. I do not think it was envisaged that you would write the concordats before the Assembly was set up. The concordat coming along in 2001 appeared to solve the problem - and it did solve the problem until 2005-06, when the impending change in the system came along in England. We carried on with the old system of the cost and volume, and England made their change to payment by results. Foundation Trusts were being brought at the same time, I think, so, that was a bit of a driver as well, because Chester wanted to be a pilot, an early first phase Trust, and probably quite a large part of their catchment area was in the Deeside strip in Wales. We did not make changes, but England did make changes. We said, "Okay, we insist on our rights under the concordat," and that was very difficult to enforce.

Q541 Albert Owen: So it is post-devolution changes that are the big issue.

Mr Morgan: Yes, I think so.

Q542 Mr David Jones: First Minister, you have mentioned the issue of improved scrutiny and transparency.

Mr Morgan: I did not say improved; I just said more.

Q543 Mr David Jones: I see, so you do not regard it necessarily as an improvement?

Mr Morgan: Sometimes, yes.

Q544 Mr David Jones: You have quoted previous instances of patients from South Wales being sent to Bangalore for cataract surgery, and nobody raised a peep about it at the time. But of course that is not really the issue we are concerned with. We are concerned with sending patients from North Wales to South Wales for elective neurosurgery. That is what has caused the kerfuffle over the last 12 months. Would you accept that if it had been suggested under the old Welsh Office that patients from North Wales should have to travel to South Wales for a brain operation, there would have been just as much an outcry then as there has been over recent months?

Mr Morgan: I do not think you can prove it either way, but I think the level of challenge is much, much greater now. I am not approving of it; I am not disapproving of it; I think it is a statement of fact that the level of challenge is much greater. In relation to patients from North Wales being told in 1990, "You will go to South Wales for hips and knees and general surgery" - and the numbers, of course, are quite large, much larger than in elective brain surgery - the operation is probably seen as less tricky or threatening, but the numbers involved are probably at least 10 times greater - the difference between relatively no kerfuffle back in 1990 and an awful lot of kerfuffle about a proposal floating in the air in 2007 is mostly related to the change in the public mood, created partially by devolution and partly by the fact that the public now challenge things much more, whether it is ministerial, whether it is to do with the Assembly, whether it is to do with Westminster, or even clinical decisions as well. They demand their rights.

Chairman: I think we have to move on now.

Q545 Mr Martyn Jones: What principles should govern the access Welsh patients to the English NHS? For example, should they use whichever service is best for them regardless of where the service is?

Mr Morgan: Obviously, clinical safety and clinical quality will be the main drivers, and the issue is always whether what you want is excellent services provided as close as possible to your home or services which are as close as possible to your home which are provided as excellently as possible. I think it has to be the first of those: excellent services provided as close as possible. There is one warning about cross-border services which I do want to refer now - although I do not think it could happen again now - when the worst disaster to hit the National Health Service struck, that is the Bristol children's heart hospital scandal about 15 years ago, one notable characteristic was that children requiring heart surgery in the Bristol area stopped going to the Bristol children's hospital because GPs in the Bristol area knew there was something wrong. Patients from South Wales and from Devon and Cornwall continued going there, because their GPs were out of the loop and they did not pick up that there was something seriously wrong at that hospital, and many of them died as a result. It was a horrible thing. That is the only example I can think of that cuts against the principle that you should be willing to travel further to get greater excellence rather than travel shorter and make a compromise on the excellence.

Q546 Mr Martyn Jones: Given that you have stated we should have excellent services as close as possible to our homes, why did your Health Minister announce that elective neurosurgery would only be performed within Wales, given that that would affect patients?

Mr Morgan: I am not aware that she went beyond floating the possibility that this was a possible solution. Our broad policy is that diagnostics should be brought closer and rehab should be brought closer, but the operations themselves will quite frequently move further away. We have taken a hell of a beating (to use the famous Norwegian football commentator's expression after Norway beat England that time) for suggesting that people should have their operations done further away from home, while at the same time saying that they should have their rehab and their diagnostics done closer to home, but you cannot compromise on the excellence.

Q547 Mr Martyn Jones: If you are having an operation done by a particular surgeon and that surgeon is three-and-a-half or four hours away, that is not a good thing, surely, if anything goes wrong post-operatively.

Mr Morgan: I do not think that is rehab, is it?

Q548 Mr Martyn Jones: There is this idea that there is some kind of collective delusion in North Wales that this was just floated. Surely that should have been seen. Why is the Health Minister not prepared to come before our Committee and defend this decision or clarify the statement for the people in North Wales?

Mr Morgan: Your definition of rehab is very different from mine. I have to say that.

Q549 Mr Martyn Jones: Forget about the definition, First Minister. That was perhaps a throwaway comment. Why is your Health Minister not prepared to come before this Committee and clarify her position? It was her statement of her position. You have come here, and we are very grateful for that, but where is she?

Mr Morgan: It is up to this Committee to decide, after you have heard today's session, whether you want to look again. Obviously I come here in the hope ----

Q550 Mr Martyn Jones: As First Minister, will you ensure that she comes before us?

Mr Morgan: Let me finish. I have agreed with your Chairman that I will come today to deal with three topics: health, transport, education, in whatever way you choose. I hope that at the end of that session you will not require a further session. If you decide you do need a further session, that is a matter to be looked at then.

Q551 Mr Martyn Jones: You know that only Members of this House and her Majesty the Queen are exempt from coming before select committees, First Minister. Even Members of this House come by convention. When a health minister did not want to come before a select committee in 1989 - and she was also called Edwina, strangely enough - she was persuaded to come by her Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Do you have the ability to persuade Edwina Hart to come before this Committee?

Mr Morgan: You are asking me now to speculate on an issue in which you are saying, before we have finished the session, that you are not happy with the outcome of the session and you want a further session with another minister. That is up to you to do and you can cross that bridge when you come to it, but I do not think you should do that before we finish the session, otherwise you are applying that my evidence is not up to muster for you. If you do make that decision, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Chairman: Thank you, Minister. On behalf of the Committee, I can accept the answer you have given, and we can move on

Q552 Albert Owen: I am going to take the evidence and the responses you have just given. You said "floated an idea" - so it has been kicked around or whatever terminology you use - but it was actually a statement by your minister on 4 July 2007 that said they wanted an all‑Wales neurosurgery in the future. To qualify that and defend her, she did say not emergencies, but just elective work. This type of elective work, as you know, is planned and we have excellent services. The two centres she referred to were Swansea and Cardiff. I am not strategically placed between a Cardiff and Swansea MP here, but I do get upset when my constituents get caught up in a spat between Cardiff and Swansea, and that is what I think this was, trying to resolve a problem between two neurosurgery services in South Wales and then thinking, as a consequence, that to make those viable we will just have in-Wales for the rest of Wales, when there is a perfectly adequate high-quality service across the border, which has satellites within North Wales, which provides the rehab that Mr Jones was referring to. It is an excellent service. That is what has caused this problem. It is not anything else that ministers in the previous Conservative administration did; it was a statement by your Welsh Health Minister with regard to the services within the borders of Wales.

Mr Morgan: I am saying that the difference between then and now is that people are much more willing to challenge an idea being floated.

Q553 Albert Owen: I respect that. I am challenging you now: is it the policy of the Welsh Assembly Government for people from North Wales to travel to either Swansea or Cardiff for neurosurgery, or is the present situation to the Walton Centre a policy that you defend and feel should move forward in the near future?

Mr Morgan: I have heard all sorts of possibilities. We are about to come to the end of the Steers Review into the future of adult neurosurgery. Is that covering emergency or just elective?

Ms Lloyd: All neurosciences. Both.

Mr Morgan: That will be coming to an end very shortly. In advance of the completion and publication of that, I am not going to make any definitive statements. I am sorry about that. I just think the timing is wrong. We will supply you with a copy of the Steers Review, but I am not aware of any proposal to change the present pattern. The Steers Review is looking at where the surgeons and the neurologists, as consultant physicians, provide their services. What is the pool of skills and talent that is available, so that, along the broad principle that I have mentioned - that you cannot compromise on excellence - you will provide services which are as excellent as you can get.

Q554 Albert Owen: As close to home as possible.

Mr Morgan: You will make a compromise on the travel, not on the excellence. That is the key thing for me. Although we as an administration took a hell of a beating over the issue of saying that people should be willing to compromise on the distance they travel and not expect to have every single specialist service provided in their local hospital ----

Q555 Albert Owen: Do you think you are wrong?

Mr Morgan: Pardon?

Q556 Albert Owen: Do you think those who wanted to give you a beating, the media and Members of the Parliament like myself, were wrong, or was the statement wrong initially to suggest that people from North West Wales ----

Mr Morgan: There was no definitive statement about where operations should be carried out.

Q557 Albert Owen: I could quote it back to you. It says, "within Wales".

Mr Morgan: No, it did not.

Q558 Chairman: I think we have to make some progress.

Mr Morgan: I am sorry, you are not letting me finish what I am saying. I was saying that the possibilities that were being floated that I heard of included surgeons from the neurosurgery departments in Cardiff and Swansea providing a service in North Wales.

Q559 Albert Owen: Sure. It says, "Therefore, in the case of adult neurosurgery, the approach that I now intend to adopt is one in which we will look as actively as possible at redirecting additional elective work generated inside Wales to the two centres at Swansea and Cardiff." That is pretty clear.

Mr Morgan: The version I heard was that it could involve surgeons from Cardiff and Swansea going to Ysbyty Gwynedd, for instance, and providing a service there. We do not know. Anyway, that is all open and up for grabs now after the completion of the Steers Review. There is no proposal to change the present ----

Q560 Albert Owen: So that statement was incorrect or taken out of context?

Mr Morgan: There is no definitive decision ----

Q561 Albert Owen: It is the record.

Mr Morgan: -- on removing services from Walton or removing North Wales' patient flows to Walton.

Q562 Albert Owen: Sure, but I am quoting from the Assembly record here. It is what has caused this argument. You kept making reference to one-thirteenth of the population of North Wales compared to Merseyside and the north-west of England. When we took evidence from the Walton Centre with regard to referrals, 20 per cent of their work was generated from Welsh patients, so it is a huge amount of people that we are talking about.

Mr Morgan: Indeed. But not as big as the percentage of Clatterbridge's work that was removed from Clatterbridge when the North Wales Cancer Centre was opened.

Q563 Albert Owen: People were still going to Clatterbridge a long time after.

Mr Morgan: They may have been, but that was probably 40 per cent of their work.

Albert Owen: I am not going to argue figures ----

Chairman: We must progress now. Thank you very much for that.

Q564 Mark Pritchard: First Minster, who sets the health policy in Wales? Is it yourself or the Health Minister?

Mr Morgan: The Health Minister would take the lead and then the Cabinet either agrees or does not agree with what she is proposing, and sometimes I am deeply involved myself as well. It will depend on the nature of the decision.

Q565 Mark Pritchard: Given the Health Minister's comments on the record which Mr Owen has just read out, is it not clear, and given your response, that there is a divergence of policy between the First Minister herself and the Health Minister?

Mr Morgan: I do not think it works like that. I have been trying to say this morning that, given the much higher degree of talent and scrutiny there is now, an idea will be floated and then here will be a strong reaction to it, and then a specialist is brought in from outside with absolutely no previous track record of involvement in Wales, although a strong track record of involvement in the subject - as with James Steers - and will be asked to make a report on what is the best way to deal with the adult neurosurgery service issue in the future.

Q566 Mark Pritchard: Forgive me, but do you not feel some sense of embarrassment that you are here before the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, having to give an account of clear contradictions between what the Health Minister has previously said on the record and what you have said previously on the record and, indeed, reiterated today?

Mr Morgan: I think that is a misunderstanding of the nature of decision-making. Sometimes an idea is floated, and then, following a reaction to it - and those reactions, as I have said several times this morning, are very different from what they would have been 15 years ago -it is given to somebody to come back with a recommendation, as we expect to have from James Steers, who is Edinburgh-based, fairly soon, over the next couple of weeks.

Ms Lloyd: Yes, in the next month.

Mr Morgan: It is imminent.

Q567 Mark Pritchard: do you accept there is confusion and this confusion, if it is not dealt with, could turn into chaos. Whilst the people of Wales want the Welsh Government to get on and deliver health services as close to home as possible and the highest quality of care possible, that delivery perhaps is going to be stalled while this confusion is going on.

Mr Morgan: I did not catch that last bit. I am sorry.

Q568 Mark Pritchard: This confusion is not helping the delivery of health services on the ground. Whilst there is this confusion at senior level within the Welsh Government it is not helping Welsh patients.

Mr Morgan: I am not aware of any evidence that it has affected the quality of patient care.

Q569 Mr David Jones: First Minister, I apologise in advance for the questions I am just about to ask you, but I believe they are important. You have referred to Professor Steers' inquiry. It is the case, is it not, that the Health Commission of Wales, prior to the last Assembly election, issued the report in which it recommended that one or other of the two neurosurgery units in South Wales should be closed?.

Mr Morgan: I cannot remember. Do you remember?

Ms Lloyd: That is true. Yes.

Q570 Mr David Jones: It is the case. And it is the case, is it not, that Mrs Edwina Hart was active in campaigning for the retention of the neurosurgery unit in Swansea?

Mr Morgan: Yes, in her constituency capacity, I am sure she was.

Q571 Mr David Jones: Indeed.

Mr Morgan: Probably every candidate standing for every party in the Swansea area would have been doing exactly the same.

Q572 Mr David Jones: I accept that. She has a constituency interest, does she not?

Mr Morgan: When you say constituency interest, in an election, yes, constituency interests are probably slightly wider than your own constituency.

Q573 Mr David Jones: I understand that, First Minister. When this policy was announced - and I am bound to say that I agree with Mr Owen: it looks to me very much to me like a statement of policy - on 4 July last year in the Assembly, had she had any discussions with you about a potential conflict of interest?

Mr Morgan: I do not think there is a potential conflict of interest.

Q574 Mr David Jones: Forgive me, I asked: Did she have any discussions with you about a potential conflict of interest?

Mr Morgan: I certainly do not recall one, because I do not think there would have been one to have.

Q575 Mark Pritchard: Earlier on I asked you about whether you have an aspiration to see more in-Wales health solutions. You did not say yes or no to that question, yet a few moments ago you mentioned wanting to see more health services delivered locally, closer to people in Wales. By definition, is that not either a policy or an aspiration?

Mr Morgan: There is a danger of getting into a semantic and meaningless discussion about what is the difference between a policy and an aspiration. I cannot get into my head what difference it would make if it was a policy or an aspiration. Decisions come up for funding, like the PET scanner: Are we going to go for a PET scanner? Who is going to fund it? Can we get a grant? Yes we did, so we go for the PET scanner. That means that people do not have to travel to Cheltenham and so on, and it means that academic researchers in the medical school can use the PET scanner, which is great. Now, is that a policy or an aspiration? It is a very good thing to have, and it was an aspiration to have a PET scanner, so, you know, I am not sure.

Mark Pritchard: I am trying to build to a case here. There is a practical (to use a word we have used many times this morning) point to why, if there is an aspiration or a policy or both to see more healthcare delivered locally, that has major implications for two major health policies of the Westminster Government and the Welsh Government. First of all, on polyclinics, because that will not deliver your aspiration for practical delivery of services more closely to Welsh patients, and, secondly, on the foundation status of payment by results to which you referred earlier. There is a perverse incentive for the Westminster Government to ensure that Foundation Trusts in England in the border counties do extremely well, and that means clearly drawing from Welsh patients as well.

Chairman: Please pose your question.

Q576 Mark Pritchard: I am getting to the question, Mr Chairman. Thank you for your guidance. Therefore, if we are having more Welsh patients coming into Foundation Trusts in order for those Foundation Trusts to be successful with payment by results, that means that there is no incentive for the Westminster Government to ensure that in-Wales health solutions grow. Would you accept that is the logical consequence and thought process?

Mr Morgan: I am afraid I am in danger of having got lost in the question build-up there. We have no aspiration to set up Foundation Hospitals. We have no ambitions or aspirations or policy to set up polyclinics. On the issue of the impact on the formation of Foundation Trusts in England, to be honest I think probably when the Foundation Trusts, through their nature, were on the point of being formed, they wanted to try to maximise income and, therefore, they were under some pressure to ignore the Department of Health guidance about allowing Welsh LHBs just across the border to continue to purchase health care from them on the old basis; that is on the cost and volume basis. Although the guidance said you must allow the Welsh Trust to continue to use the cost and volume basis, they were seeking to ignore that. We do not have that problem now, but we did have that problem in 2005-06, as they were getting ready for payment by results, and in 2006-07 in the first year. I think those have now been solved and the Foundation Trusts and the would-be Foundation Trusts along the English border are now abiding by the DoH guidance - on which, in any case, we are now attempting to reach a new protocol, to prevent any underlying tensions.

Q577 Mark Pritchard: Does it mean, finally, that Welsh patients do not have choice - which is apparently the watchword of the National Health Service. They do not have choice. Those living on the border have to go into England to receive treatment, and choice frankly does not apply to the National Health Service when it comes to Welsh patients.

Mr Morgan: Welsh geography is such that along the English/Welsh border the substantial market towns, like Chester, Shrewsbury, and Hereford, are all in England. The small border little towns tend to be in Wales. Therefore, you will tend to get Welsh GPs who have English patients because they are in Knighton or Presteigne or wherever, and you will tend to have Shrewsbury, Hereford, and Chester, having a lot of their patients coming over the border from England. It is not a matter of choice; that is a matter of plain and simple geography, where the towns are, and where the substantial towns are.

Q578 Mrs James: Before we go to the question, First Minister, I would like to say that we are aware that we are awaiting the Steers Review, and as the MP where Morriston Hospital is situated I would like to make the point that it is of the highest quality. There is no doubt across the country that the neurosurgery services at the Morriston are of the highest. That is why it has been such a burning debate. It is not simply an argument between Cardiff and Swansea; it is about where the best services are situated. We believe in Swansea that they are in Morriston Hospital. I would like to go now to the question proper: how would you characterise the situation with regard to cross-border health services? Do you think it is working. Do you think it is of marginal significance? Do you think it is just a bit of a nuisance.

Mr Morgan: I think we have changed considerably less than in England. The changes that have caused the divergence have been mostly English changes rather than Welsh changes, let me put it that way, and handling those produces tensions from time to time. 2005-06 and 2006-07 were a bad couple of years for that reason, in getting the English system to settle down without disadvantaging Welsh patients and to abide by the 2001 concordat on due compensation if one country made a change that disadvantaged another country. On the general issue of where should services be and not compromising on excellence, it does mean occasionally that we in Wales have to accept that a service will go outside Wales that previously has been provided in Wales. Paediatric cardiac surgery left Cardiff - strangely enough, after the Bristol children's hearts disaster. The worst disaster ever to afflict the NHS anywhere in Britain occurred in Bristol, in the children's hospital, but, as a consequence of it, we lost paediatric cardiac surgery in Wales to Bristol to help them rebuild. That is one of those ironies that happens. You would have thought they would have sent all the patients to Cardiff as the next nearest paediatric cardiac service - and we have an amazingly good paediatric cardiac surgery service - but it did not happen that way because the Department of Health flooded money into Bristol to rebuild. We lost paediatric cardiac surgery as a result and we do not have it now. We have to accept that from time to time. You will send patients to Great Ormond Street Hospital - we have always sent patients to Great Ormond Street Hospital and so has everybody else - and occasionally you have to accept that a service is so super specialised that it will be closed in Wales and will migrate into a big centre in England. That does not just apply in North Wales, it applies in South Wales as well from time to time. Now and again, as with plastic surgery in Morriston, I think it has been designated now as a supra-regional centre, in which it has a status for dealing with plastic surgery. For burns, serious industrial incidents in the docks or the oil refineries or whatever, if there are a lot of burns, they will be brought from the west of England, from Swindon, from Bristol, from Devon and Cornwall I think, to Morriston. Occasionally, you will get a designation of a Welsh centre as a supra-regional, but it tends to be more the other way. You must do not compromise on excellence. You always try to drive towards excellence and provide it as locally as possible. Sometimes, you will lose Parliamentary seats and you will lose Assembly seats because of not compromising on that principle, as we have done.

Q579 Mark Williams: I am not wishing to open a whole can of worms, but I just thought I would go back to Mrs Hart's statement, but more the practical manifestation of that. It may be a question for Ms Lloyd. What practical directive, if any, was given to local health boards following Mrs Hart's statement? I have talked to two LHBs and they seem a little unclear, to put it mildly, as to what the follow-on from that statement was, specifically with regard to neurosurgery, though I have to say the generality as well. The Committee has had a copy of a letter from the South Birmingham NHS trust concerning the provision of artificial limbs, asserting that funding is no longer available from the local area - presumably it has been directed to or repatriated to the all-Wales solution - stating that "the matter is entirely beyond and outside our control." It that an LHB response to the ministerial directive or - as the Minister has talked about the pursuit of excellence and we all agree with that - the specifics of individual cases. What have you said to the LHBs following Mrs Hart's statement?

Ms Lloyd: The practical implication of that statement was that we had to start building the case to present to Mr Speers in terms of exactly what were the flows going through the borders in order to inform the work that he would have to do. We asked the LHBs, therefore, to be quite specific about the nature of cases/the case mix that went out through Wales and where those patients came from, because nobody like Mr Steers could start to undertake a comprehensive review without that sort of information. There was a very considerable amount of work done, as well, in terms of not just neurosurgery but the whole complex field of neurosciences that has to be looked at. The questions are: Is the neurology service sufficient in Wales at the moment or does everybody have to go somewhere else - and that might be either within or without of Wales - to get a general neurological service? The views of LHBs on that, on the consequences of starting to move more closely to patients and excellent service - because we cannot compromise on safety and we will not compromise on quality - were the sorts of pieces of evidence that were required of the LHBs together, on behalf of the Government, in order to present to Mr Steers so he could start to undertake his comprehensive review.

Q580 Alun Michael: You referred to Foundation Hospitals, primarily in relation to financial arrangements across the border. One of the main characteristics of Foundation Trusts is to seek to involve large numbers of the community.

Ms Lloyd: That is right.

Q581 Alun Michael: Members of the relevant communities who feed the hospitals in Wales and England, so that members on both sides of the border are treated in the same way. I would like to confirm that that is something you welcome.

Mr Morgan: Do you mean on the governance side, in terms of directors?

Q582 Alun Michael: No, the whole point of an NHS Trust is that it engages the widest possible engagement from people in the wider community. Therefore, members of the public are admitted ----

Ms Lloyd: To board meetings and monthly meetings and stakeholder meetings.

Q583 Alun Michael: In the wider engagement. It is the most exciting thing about Foundation Trusts, from which, personally, I would like lessons learned within Wales, as a matter of interest. Those hospitals that serve communities across England and Wales are treating their widest range of customers in the same way, so that people become members of them. I assume this is something you would welcome, that they are being treated in the same way.

Mr Morgan: Not necessarily as part of a Foundation Trust model or as something you cannot have unless you have a Foundation Trust model, but a wide level of patient engagement and community engagement is an essential part of an effective health service and is a fundamental part now of the awarding of research contracts. You must show that you have consulted with the patient group involved or families, et cetera. Likewise, our proposal for keeping community health councils and expanding the role of community health councils essentially is part of the same mood music of trying to engage the public to the maximum degree, whether you are talking about the intelligent patient or the families and communities generally.

Q584 Alun Michael: You are making a much narrower point. I have strongly supported the retention of community health councils. In this case, the point I am making is that there is a cross-border anomaly. The fact that everybody is being treated in the same way across the patient cohort surely is something as well.

Mr Morgan: Could I ask Ann to answer this. Let me pass your question on, in a sort of rugby player sense, to Ann and put it this way: Where there is a pending Foundation Trust application, such as with Gobowen, where probably 40 per cent of the turnover or patients or whatever come from Wales, is the Trust itself then involving the communities and/or patient groups in Wales, and CHCs in Wales for that matter, into this discussion?

Q585 Alun Michael: Yes, we have heard that. I just wanted to be sure, because you were talking about the financial cross-border issues, that those issues of engagement with the public are also understood.

Mr Morgan: Okay.

Ms Lloyd: Yes.

Q586 Mr David Jones: First Minister, would you say the health service in Wales follows different guiding principles from those that apply in England?

Mr Morgan: Not guiding principles, no.

Q587 Mr David Jones: Essentially, Welsh patients should be able to expect to enjoy the same level of service as a patient from England?

Mr Morgan: That is not an issue of principle. The guiding principles are the same; that it should, with very few exceptions (dentistry and so forth) be free at the point of need. Those are the guiding principles. They are the same in Wales and in England.

Q588 Mr David Jones: A lot of my constituents wonder why they pay their taxes and national insurance contributions at precisely the same rates as patients who live in England and yet have to wait considerably longer for their hip operation in Gobowen.

Mr Morgan: That is a matter for Gobowen to answer, why they would give a lower priority to patients from Wales than in England. My understanding is that the median wait for elective surgery in Wales is one day longer than in England.

Q589 Mr David Jones: The target waiting time, as you know, is considerably lower if you come from England than if you come from Wales.

Mr Morgan: You will be aware of the recent analysis by an independent, very highly respected body, KHCS, the UK's leading independent healthcare information and improvement services provider. It reveals that waiting times in England and Wales have fallen at a similar rate. The analysis that has been done recently of the median waiting time is 44 days in England and 45 days in Wales. I do not think anybody is going to lose a lot of sleep over a 24-hour difference in the median waiting time.

Q590 Mr David Jones: Ben Bradshaw, the English Junior Health Minister, came before the Committee recently, pointing out the massive disparity in waiting lists between England and Wales. I think you would concede that many more people, thousands more people, are on waiting lists in Wales than they are in England.

Mr Morgan: It is the length of time you wait and not the number of people on the waiting list that is significant. I am assuming that the median waiting time is probably the most significant one. Nobody wants a long tail of the people on the second half of the median; that is longer than the median. If the median waiting time is 44 in England and 45 in Wales that would not bespeak of the massive difference you are referring to. Waiting lists are collected differently. NHS statistics started to diverge long before devolution in how records were kept of treatment and outcomes. That is not a consequence of devolution; it is a consequence of administrative devolution as much as anything. It started well before democratic devolution. We collect on to our waiting lists all referrals; in England it is only GP referrals that are collected. We have a bigger waiting list because we collect everybody on our waiting list; that is, not just GP referrals, but consultant to consultant referrals, physiotherapist to consultant referrals. I cannot tell you how much difference that makes.

Ms Lloyd: It is 30%.

Ms Lloyd: There is a 30% difference probably.

Q591 Mr David Jones: In your opinion, are these cross-border disparities likely to continue, get worse, or get better in the future?

Mr Morgan: I would like to think that we could make up that one day difference in the median waiting time and possibly overtake England but, to be honest, in the recent statement of principles that have come out in England it was very much a shift. Other than for that one principle of choice, which we do not follow, three out of the four principles that were recently pronounced in England are very much Welsh-oriented ones. Helping people stay healthy and independent is very much a principle that we have stated from well before 2002 when they were published. Giving people choice in their care services is one we do not follow. Delivering services closer to home is one we very strongly do follow, and tackling inequalities. Three out of the four are the English health service not copying exactly, but moving closer to the Welsh definition, and, therefore, that is going to shrink the divergence of what we are seeking. Cracking the waiting lists, which was the big English drive back in 1997 and which we followed about three or four years later, is one example where we have learned from England. We were concentrating on these other three: helping people to stay healthy (trying to promote health and well-being as distinct from treating people when they are ill and, especially, looking at the elective surgery waiting lists); delivering services closer to home; and tackling inequalities. That means the divergence is now getting less because England are saying, "Well, yes, Wales has followed us on waiting lists, but now we are going to follow Wales on three out of four of these principles."

Q592 Mr David Jones: Delivering services closer to home, therefore, does not mean that a patient from Queensferry should have to go to Swansea for his brain operation, does it?

Mr Morgan: No, or to Cheltenham for a PET scan. Whatever it is, you do not compromise on the excellence. Sometimes that does mean having to go further, of, in order not to compromise on the excellence, but you do not travel further in order to have a service that is not as good.

Q593 Hywel Williams: You would also agree that health inequalities predate democratic devolution, not only differences in waiting lists but also expected lifespan and the sorts of diseases that Welsh people are subject to as compared to those in England. There is a broad picture here, quite apart from any waiting list questions.

Mr Morgan: Well, strangely enough, less than you would think. If you look at the demographic statistics for the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, you would have expected Wales, given its socio-economic mix or much smaller middle-class as a proportion of the population, to have an adverse life expectancy. Actually, it is tiny. It is Scotland which has the adverse life expectancy, not Wales, whereas Scotland is a middle-class country very similar to England in socio-economic status. England has the best life expectancy. We are about one year shorter. Scotland is about three years shorter than us, but you would expect Scotland to be up there with England because its socio-economic status is very similar. Within Wales, yes, we do get disparities. The famous Blaenau Gwent/Monmouth disparity, which is about five years, and Ceredigion and Powys have very long life expectancies - and memories as well!

Q594 Hywel Williams: Let me get on to some more practical issues, speaking about cross-border issues. If there are issues to be resolved on cross-border problems, at which level should they be resolved? Should they be between the Department of Health and the Welsh Assembly Government, or between the primary care trusts and the local health boards, or is it horses for courses?

Mr Morgan: That is the key issue. Where there are arguments over money, we like to think that they will be solved between the commissioning LHB, usually in Wales, and their provider Trust (or Foundation Trust these days) in England. If they cannot agree, as they could not in 2006-07, then it tends to come up for arbitration between Ann and her division, and the Director of Finance who works to Ann, and the strategic health authority in the West Midlands or the north-west of England. That is the arbitration procedure. Sometimes, of course, it bubbles away politically and then that is where politicians have to get involved. That is when you get involved, that is when we get involved, that is when Cabinet ministers get involved and so on. But, basically, we hope it will be solved at the level of the LHB and the individual Trust.

Q595 Hywel Williams: Given the traffic across the border in health terms, should the governance arrangements for NHS bodies on either side include provision for patients and citizens from across the border? I know you have answered the question, to some extent, in response to Alun Michael earlier.

Mr Morgan: I did ask Alun whether he was referring to governance, and I think he said no, he was not. He was referring to a kind of stakeholder involvement in policy and so on.

Q596 Hywel Williams: Not formal governance.

Mr Morgan: Not formal governance, not in the terms of a non-executive directors, et cetera. Ann I do not know if you have any observations on that. We are not involving governance, so far as I am aware.

Ms Lloyd: No, but we have not, but we do use their quality standards and outcome data to assure the local health boards undertaking their governance by their boards that there is no major divergence. We use the data rather than putting people on their boards.

Q597 Alun Michael: First Minister, in response to Mr David Jones you made a remark regarding the waiting times at Gobowen, in particular. You said that is an administrative issue for the Trust itself. Are you suggesting there - and we have had some evidence in our inquiry from Trusts within England - that they do have two lists: one for Welsh patients and one for English patients?

Mr Morgan: Yes.

Q598 Albert Owen: That is purely down to them and the way they administer it. For example, the Boughton Centre serve 20% of the patients but get 60% of their funding from Wales - and I would say Wales get a good deal there - but with regards to the Robert Jones & Angus Hunt Trust, they get fewer patients as a percentage than funding. Are Welsh patients getting a bad deal from Gobowen?

Mr Morgan: If Gobowen seeks to bring pressure to bear on the LHBs from Wales who have commissioned services to it, by making it clear to patients from Wales, "Your LHB is not paying us enough money compared with what we get from England," we would say that is clinically a very improper thing to do. Some people say that did happen; some people say it did not. I do not know, but it was part of that difficult period in 2005-06 when the new payment by results was coming in, and the Department of Health issued guidance to Gobowen, Chester, Shrewsbury, and Hereford that you have got to allow the Welsh to continue to pay not on payment by results but on cost and volume (the old system). They were not abiding by that guidance from the Department of Health, because they kept moaning and saying, "Yes, you should be giving us this extra money" or "It's going to mess up our application for Foundation Trust status" or whatever. Maybe some of the patients, quite wrongly, were brought into that process and they should have been left out of it completely by the clinicians or by any of the admin managers as well.

Q599 Albert Owen: I think it was more administrators who were saying this rather than clinicians. They said they were seen regardless of where they were situated. Do you think that is resolved now?

Mr Morgan: 2008-09, we have no current disputes, but because of the underlying tensions there is this very rapid fire series of meetings and exchanges of letters going on right now - and we hope we will be able to report back to you on, we hope, a successful outcome - of trying to get a much firmer memorandum of understanding, so that any further changes that happen in England are not going to cause any rumbles and tensions or any of the kind of rows you are talking about now in the future. In 2008-09: so far, so good, no problems.

Chairman: Perhaps we could move on to higher education issues.

Q600 Albert Owen: Higher education issues are probably less contentious, but some of the questions I have here might not be so. How does the Welsh Assembly Government ensure, when talking about cross-border impacts with the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, that at an early stage your policy is reflected on Wales with regards to part-time students, for instance, or the changes to student finance regimes?

Mr Morgan: Student finance has been quite a vexed political issue in the last five years and may become so again with this review, which is going to start before the end of 2009, into whether the cap is going to be lifted above the present £3,000 in England. If it happens, if that cap is lifted or got rid of altogether, that would create a lot of disturbance in the student finance regime. England made its decision to go for a more market-based model. It is not a matter for us, but it was not a model that we wanted to follow in Wales. Some of our universities are very dependent on inflows of students from England: Aberystwyth in particular, other universities less so, but all universities are involved in this cross-border flow and the international flow. They all want international students most of all, and trying to get the international students in is a very, very big issue financially. The issue, then, of the England-Wales flow is critical to some universities, Aberystwyth in particular.

Q601 Albert Owen: I did not want top-up fees either but they are there now. Some of the Vice-Chancellors are suggesting that it could hamper them in the future with regard to funding. How would you resolve that? Would you work with the English Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills at an early stage to try to resolve these issues? 2009 is fast approaching.

Mr Morgan: We have asked quit recently when this review is going to start. If it starts on 1 January 2009, that is only seven months away; if it starts on 31 December we have a bit more time because that is 18 months away. We do not know, but we have asked recently for a very early sight of and a very early discussion on what you are thinking of doing in England, because it could have a very, very significant effect on the viability of the Universities' cross-border flows of students; extra payments for staff which would mean staff flowing from Welsh universities to English universities if the cap was used or if lifting the cap was used in order to increase academic salaries in England at a level we could not afford to do in Wales. You can see the problem.

Q602 Albert Owen: The Assembly Government has a science policy for Wales, which was published in 2006. With the very fact that science money is not devolved, how do you get engaged in that at a very early stage to ensure that science departments and science research and developments are on a par with the rest of the United Kingdom? In the past, historically, we have ----

Mr Morgan: Historically it never has been no. It has been very sad the way that has evolved. We are trying to put it right. It is not really a cross-border service in the way this Committee has defined it, but it is a cross-border issue that has arisen recently, that, in the drive in England, which is very understandable, to reduce the number of quangos, sometimes they have merged a UK quango, like the Medical Research Council, with an England-only quango, such as the research agency of the National Health Service in England. We now have one quango with two functions, one of which is UK and one of which is England. OSCHR, the new body, is a result of that merger and we were brought into that very late. Of course, we tend to emphasise that it is UK body, and they tend to emphasise the fact that it is England-funded, "Where's your subscription to this?" We say, "It's a UK body." The Medical Research Council is no longer a UK body; it now has an England-only function added to it. We understand why they want to reduce the number of quangos, and it is quite right that they should reduce the number of quangos, but it is very hard when you merge a UK and an English quango.

Q603 Albert Owen: When you were developing your strategy for science, on what formula were you basing it? How much research and develop money, for example, were you getting and have you put the case for more?

Mr Morgan: Indeed. That is how we got the PET scanner. That was funded through the Office of Science and Technology. That was UK funding, topped up by HEFCE funding within Wales. A lot of these things will be jointly funded in that way.

Q604 Albert Owen: Do you see it improving in the future?

Mr Morgan: Yes, but the merging of a UK and an English quango is always going to mean a lot of very careful negotiation. You are right, science policy is, in principle, not devolved, but that does not mean, because of its importance for climate change or for higher education or for economic development, that we do not have to have a pretty strong input into making our own science policy and devising how to make sure that is, properly done.

Q605 Albert Owen: Are their bilateral talks on this now between your ministers and ministers in London?

Mr Morgan: On science?

Q606 Albert Owen: On the science funding.

Mr Morgan: Yes, but usually it is done by lobbying the research councils or the MRC or the new Technology Strategy Board for the near market-research and our science advisers group. We have had a meeting with Iain Gray, the new Head of the Technology Strategy Board already, and we hope to have a meeting soon with Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the Chief Executive of the MRC - who, fortunately, although you might be misled by his name, is as Welsh as they come.

Q607 Mark Williams: I would like to follow up on the mechanisms available to you to influence the cross-border education debate. I very much agreed with what you said about Aberystwyth, in particular, having to rely on students from England and much further afield. What role is there in the Joint Ministerial Committee for you to push the agenda, particularly the implications of the decisions on raising the cap?

Mr Morgan: We have not sought to put it out to the Joint Ministerial Committee. It is an interesting point as to whether we should, but that would really only arise if there was interest in Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as in England and Wales on doing so. Anything can be put on the agenda of the JMC. It has been restructured now under the guidance of Paul Murphy, the Secretary of State for Wales, with his other hats on really, and we are going to have the first meeting of the revamped Joint Ministerial Committee Summit later this month. Jack Straw will chair it, but Paul Murphy is the person charged by the Cabinet in general to revamp the JMC machinery and to reset the clock - because it had not met really, apart from the JMC Europe, for six or seven years. It had rusted away and now it has been taken out of the garage and is being given a good scrub up and it is restarting later this month. We can put anything on the agenda for that, and, now that you have mentioned it, science funding might be something on which I will have to cogitate as to whether that should be there. It might be too late to put it on the agenda for this month, but certainly for a subsequent meeting.

Q608 Mark Williams: That would be welcome news in mid-Wales, as well as elsewhere. Cross-border issues now in relation to further education colleges being able to award foundation degrees. Is that an issue of concern? Does the Welsh Assembly Government have any intention to address the issue?

Mr Morgan: The Scottish percentage of foundation degrees done by further education colleges is extraordinarily high. About 30% of all of their degrees are done in further education colleges. We know the Scottish system is different: they leave school at 17 not 18 or they do not have an A-level then, but, even so, that is a remarkable difference. We are much the lowest. England have about 6% and we have 1% of degrees coming out of further education colleges. The big further education colleges and the successful further education colleges, especially the successful arc along North East Wales and Pembrokeshire, the big, strong, successful FE colleges like Yale, like Deeside, like Staffordshire, like Pembrokeshire, could easily, I am sure, do much more by way of providing foundation degrees.

Q609 Mark Williams: Would you welcome that? We had the discussion in light of the Further Education and Training Act of last year. Is that something the Welsh Assembly Government would be pushing for?

Mr Morgan: We have just had the Webb Review. We are digesting the consequences of the Webb Review. The Webb Review has recommended that we merge certain FE colleges because they are too small. We have tried to cover some of the FE deserts - and I am not going to specify where they - where there is not enough FE provision. We have tried to encourage back-office mergers - not mergers of the college but mergers of the financial function. I was pleased, when I was up in Yale recently, to hear that Yale and Deeside are trying to start talks on merging their back offices, which is brilliant. The Webb Review has injected a big reform agenda in the FE world. I am not sure we are ready yet to say, "Okay, we've digested everything from Webb, now you move ahead," but it is possible that the big, viable, very solidly rated by Estyn FE colleges, like the three in North-East Wales plus Pembrokeshire, could move ahead tomorrow almost if they wanted to.

Q610 Mark Williams: It is a highly competitive market, particularly in North-East Wales. Does that not just leave those across the border in England to offer that benefit.

Mr Morgan: Yes. That is not what it is driving it, though. It is whether you get 10 straight As from Estyn. If Yale gets 10 straight As from Estyn, you know that they could well do foundation degrees without breaking sweat. That is basically it. It is not competition from England; it is how good you are.

Q611 Mark Williams: You have mentioned the Webb Review. On capital funding in Wales, Sir Adrian stated "we are in serious danger of allowing the estate to fall into decay" - again the divide between funding in England, particularly capital funding. I think students regard it as a competitive market in terms of the facilities on offer in different institutions. Given that funding divide, is there not a danger that we will lose out to English colleges beyond the border?

Mr Morgan: It is a variable picture throughout Wales. We have set certain priorities for FE colleges to drive their capital investment and course provision. Some colleges are doing well out of that and are able to open new campuses (Llandrillo being a good case in point, opening a big campus in Rhyl, and Ystrad Mynach opening a new campus in Rhymney in the heart of the heads of the valleys area) and other colleges are screaming blue murder because they do not tick all the boxes of the priorities that we are getting. It is the losers from change who scream, and the winners quietly go off in a corner and spend the extra money they are getting and do not talk about it very much. There is an inevitable part of the management of change. You have to have change and you have to set priorities. We are doing that, and some colleges come out of it very well and some do not.

Q612 Mr David Jones: Turning to transport, what are your views on the proposal in the Local Transport Bill to abolish the Transport Commissioner for Wales?

Mr Morgan: Perhaps I could turn to Tony Parker. It is a matter which is a plain and simple Department for Transport responsibility, as I understand it, but do we have a right of consultation on it?

Mr Parker: I am not aware that we have been consulted on it.

Q613 Mr David Jones: You have not been consulted at all?

Mr Morgan: I am only aware of it as a political issue, not a consultation issue.

Mr David Jones: I think that answers the question, Chairman.

Q614 Mrs James: There is currently a process for the regional transport plans and national road and rail transport plans to fit together and into the Wales Transport Strategy . What procedures are there to ensure that Welsh plans and the regional/local transport plans (in England) also dovetail in terms of integration and timetables?

Mr Morgan: They do not. It is a big problem. The A483 south of Wrexham towards Swansea is very much bedevilled by the issue. Where it goes into England, Oswestry, and south from there, through Llanymynech, before it goes back into Wales and near Welshpool, that has been dropped under the West Midlands regional assembly priority setting process, and they are not interested in the bit in England of the A483. They regard it as aWelsh highway. We did not draw the border. We cannot control the fact that there is this ten‑mile stretch in England, from Gobowen down through Llanymynech - something like ten miles in England, would it be? It is of no interest in England. If they do not do their bit, we could do our bit and all of a sudden you would have a lot of crashes where you have do slow down from 60 mph to 30 mph, as you have to do now when you reach the village of Pant - which, although it sounds Welsh is in England.

Q615 Mrs James: But it has been identified as the main route between South and North Wales, has it not?

Mr Morgan: It is, yes. Absolutely. It is a key North-Wales/South-Wales route. It is an important freight road, probably more important, than the A470 - although David may not agree with that. That is a big problem. The east-west route, the Welshpool to Buttington Cross route, has also been dropped, and we have a problem where you cross the river. We have tried to find a way of doing our bit and then terminating at the river or across the river. Tony, you might want to say a bit more about that.

Mr Parker: Both these schemes were classified as being of regional importance only by the Highways Agency/Department for Transport, so they were consigned to the regional funding allocation process which was administered by the regional assemblies. The Buttington scheme, which is the link between Welshpool and Shrewsbury, was not considered by the West Midlands regional assembly within that process - therefore it achieved no status at all - therefore, as it was not part of the Highways Agency's targeted programme of improvements, there was no funding allocated for it. They had been with us during the process of public consultation, but at that point where there was no funding allocated for it, the Department for Transport elected not to engage with us in announcing a preferred route.

Mr Morgan: This does relate back to health to some degree. If, for instance, the Shrewsbury and Telford Trust decides to commit more and more of its resources to the Telford Hospital and not to the Shrewsbury Hospital, then it is very important. The patients from the northern half of Powys, who use the Shrewsbury and Telford Trusts are going to be disadvantaged by that. Unless there is a very good road through from the Severn Valley and across into not just Shrewsbury but also Telford, it is going to be a longer journey.

Q616 Mrs James: Another quirky cross-border issue that has been raised with me in my constituency is how we can integrate the concessionary free travel provision. Already some of my pensioners have picked up on the fact that, despite what has been said publicly, they will not be able to use their passes cross-border when English passes come in.

Mr Morgan: The key difference between the English pass and the Welsh pass is that the English path is confined to non-peak hours and the Welsh pass is for any time of day, et cetera. English local authorities and Welsh local authorities are simply funding the lost income to the bus operators, are supposed to be reasonable and practical and not be too fussy about cross-border flows: in and out of Chester, the Deeside strip, across the border, down the borders, down to Gloucester and Abergavenny across to Lydney or wherever it might be. But there are a few problems emerging because of that different definition of the availability of the bus pass.

Mr Parker: There are one or two other things that are different. Within the Welsh scheme, that is funded on the basis of actual usage; that is, journeys made. In England, it is funded through the regional support grant. There are winners and losers, therefore, between local authorities under the English system. We do it on the basis of actuals, journeys that have been made, so we know exactly what is being done. We also have two pilot schemes going for 16- and 18-year-olds and also for the severely disabled on community transport. In terms of what the Welsh scheme might look like, it is necessary for us to conclude those pilot schemes to see what results they give us. In terms of those differences and those uncertainties, our position is that there are quite a few things that need to be sorted out before we can really start talking about an entirely integrated system across England and Wales.

Q617 Mrs James: Because of the system we are using in Wales, the practicality is that people want to go to the popular destinations: to Porthcawl, for example, or Bristol Zoo, as my pensioners have mentioned to me. Some authorities would be taking a greater share of responsibility, above and beyond the normal transport patterns.

Mr Morgan: Tony, is Swansea to Bristol Zoo available under the free bus pass scheme, or is that regarded as interregional and not local?

Mr Parker: There is an accommodation under the Welsh scheme whereby, if people have a natural centre where essential services are across the border, which is nearby, we give the discretion to the local authority, through which this is funded, to allow those journeys to be made and to be funded under the concessionary fares scheme.

Mr Morgan: But does Bristol Zoo count as a natural destination?

Ms Lloyd: I think we are talking about post office services and the like - so slightly more essential services than that.

Mr Morgan: It sounds to me like a try on, Siān.

Mrs James: I think so, but they like to go.

Q618 Mr David Jones: I have a supplementary issue going back to the cross-border road building issue. From a Welsh perspective, I have been very concerned that we may have a missed opportunity under the Planning Bill which is going through the House at the moment, which, as you know, provides for the establishment of an Infrastructure Planning Commission which would have overall responsibility for major national infrastructure, including roads. However, in respect of road building, policies of national significance are deemed to include roads within England only, and therefore cross-border routes would be subject to the existing regime, which has given us, for example, the A5117 link between North Wales and the north of England. Have the Welsh Assembly Government had any dealings with the declogging of this, because it does seem to me unfortunate that, whilst England is going to enjoy a streamlining of powers in respect of road building projects within its borders, Wales will not be the beneficiary in terms of cross-border routes?

Mr Morgan: This is not an Act of Parliament yet, so I would hesitate to get too much involved with something which is subject to amendment possibly in its final stages.

Q619 Mr David Jones: If I could interrupt you, First Minister, I happen to be involved from a frontbencher position, where I did raise this issue with the responsible minister.

Mr Morgan: I was going to say that we have been heavily involved, where relevant, on the IPC concept, but obviously we are not the body responsible. That is clearly in Westminster, the parliamentary responsibility as of now, to determine whether the Bill goes through and becomes an Act. On the IPC, we will accept whatever happens according to how Parliament determines, but I think the structure of the IPC, unless it is amended, is that a national policy statement will determine the policy and a panel will be empanelled to determine the local site issues in the usual public inquiry way but it will not be able to re-fight the battles over what the policy should be. Whether that is good streamlining or a "democratic deficit", as I heard it described inevitably on the Today programme last week, I do not know. It is not for me to judge. What is important is that, if it involves something that is devolved, it is our national policy statement that is relevant; if it is something that is not devolved, it is a Westminster government's national policy statement that is relevant (for instance on electricity power stations, et cetera). If it is cross-border, I must admit I have not thought of that one. I do not know - Tony, perhaps you have come across that.

Mr Parker: There is a provision for consultation with Welsh ministers on issues that cross the border. Certainly on rail matters.

Q620 Mr David Jones: I can understand that but the new streamlined procedures will not apply to cross-border routes. What worries me, as someone who has to commute quite frequently down all the routes that the First Minister has mentioned, is that the prospect of getting that upgrading quickly is probably receding as a result of the new procedure not applying to these cross-border roads.

Mr Morgan: Would the A5117 be big enough to qualify to be IPC?

Q621 Mr David Jones: It joins a motorway and the A55 expressway.

Mr Morgan: All right. I am only guessing, but my impression is that they want to confine the IPCs' throw to the big strategic issues: nuclear power stations; strategic level ports, not small ports; strategic level, airports, not small airports. They keep emphasising that.

Q622 Mr David Jones: And major roads?

Mr Morgan: What is a major road? That is the issue really, is it not?

Q623 Mr David Jones: I do not want to take up too much time on this, as I am conscious that we have been here a long time already, but it seems to me that from a Welsh perspective we are missing a huge opportunity by not becoming involved in that process so far as cross-border routes are concerned.

Mr Morgan: If it is a big enough road project to qualify for IPC treatment, it would then be in a national policy statement of the Assembly if it is a road that is all in Wales. It would be a Department for Transport policy if it is all in England. I am not sure about if it is a very big, cross-border road, big enough to qualify for IPC but in Wales and in England. Because it is a cross-border issue, I think we are going to have to think about that and see what has been considered.

Chairman: Perhaps you could take that back to the Assembly.

Q624 Mr Martyn Jones: You are aware, of course, that one of the fastest growing areas in travel terms is the Deeside hub: Wrexham, Chester, Deeside and Merseyside.

Mr Morgan: Indeed.

Q625 Mr Martyn Jones: That is creating a problem. A lot of people are commuting into west Cheshire and Merseyside from North East Wales. Do you recognise that problem as regards the Assembly?

Mr Morgan: Absolutely. I think there is a very extensive commute both ways. Airbus is the manufacturing plant which is the jewel in the crown of the manufacturing industry in Britain and in Wales. I think 38% of their workforce comes from the north-west of England, and even down to Shrewsbury and the West Midlands.

Q626 Mr Martyn Jones: Are there any proposals to alleviate the problems for the commuters?

Mr Morgan: We lost a recent public inquiry, did we not, on one particular element of improved communication? The last time there was joint co-operation on a real project was over the Woodbank junction, but that worked okay. It was in England but it was our pressure that caused the Department for Transport to agree that they would improve the dreadful Woodbank junction, which is the key junction for commuting on to the M56.

Mr Parker: That is a project that was jointly funded - a fairly modest contribution from our side of the border, but it did work. In terms of the inquiry that we have not made the draft orders on, inevitably that will give us pause for thought. Inevitably we will be looking at which options we need to look at in the light of the findings and recommendations of the inspector. That will include an appreciation of how much of the burden of cross-border movements can be taken by public transport, in addition to possibly a scaled-down version of the road scheme, which was really the bone of contention at the public inquiry.

Q627 Mr Martyn Jones: You mentioned public transport. Of course, one of the problems is that the railway link between Wrexham and Bidston (in Merseyside) and Chester is not brilliant. I wondered whether the Welsh Assembly Government has any plans to enhance that?

Mr Morgan: I think we and Network Rail are jointly funding a study into the potential electrification of the Wrexham-Bidston line currently. Let us wait until the outcome of that scheme. I have been on it a few times myself: it stops at an awful lot of stations, it does not make very quick progress, it has to be said, and it finishes up in Bidston and not in Liverpool. It finishes up in the middle of the Wirral - which is a bit of an oddity really, to be honest. But it is a valuable service, and if it was electrified and could be properly linked up with Mersey travel then it could play a much more valuable role in linking North East Wales and the Merseyside conurbation.

Q628 Mr David Jones: Getting back to electrification, First Minister, that appears to me to have been put on the backburner as a result of your coalition with Plaid Cymru. Is that a fair comment?

Mr Morgan: Electrification of the network Bidston to Wrexham?

Q629 Mr David Jones: Yes.

Mr Morgan: No, not at all. I cannot remember when the decision was made, but I think it was subsequent to the formation of the coalition. The decision was made to jointly fund the feasibility study with Network Rail, was not?

Mr Parker: Yes.

Q630 Albert Owen: I think the priority of that has slipped, to be absolutely frank. I am worried that investment in railways in North Wales, in particular, has slipped back, particularly since the franchise. When we had Arriva in front of us with regards to the franchise, they said that they were short of cash. I feel the cash is drying up and they cannot enhance. In North Wales we have seen ticket increases and overcrowding rather than improved services. Again, with First Great Western we have seen issues with regards to South Wales. What is your department doing to improve those positions?

Mr Morgan: The big cross-border routes are not our franchises. The Virgin franchise to Euston and the FGW franchise from Swansea to Paddington are not our franchises.

Q631 Albert Owen: Do you have input into that as the consultee?

Mr Morgan: Not as much as we would like. The invitation to tender came in just before the new Railways Act came in - which would have given us a right to be consulted. For instance, when Virgin decided quite abruptly to abandon the early morning discount, which produced this colossal increase from £60 to £220 to travel from North Wales to Euston, we were not consulted on that at all. I do not even know whether the Department for Transport was consulted on that, but it is a terribly sad day for rail travel to Euston. On our franchise through the Borders - it is our franchise although it is partially in England - we have a good working relationship with Arriva. We have put a loss of subsidy money in to improving the services on this big hook really from Maesteg to Holyhead via Bridgend, Cardiff, Newport, Cwmbran, up through Hereford, Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Wrexham, et cetera, and all the way along the North Wales coast. It is an odd-looking route when you look at it, but it has helped to provide services, some of which are reasonably quick, some of which stop at an extraordinary number of stations, but then you have to have collective services as well as the express services. It has meant that the service from North Wales to South Wales through the borders is far superior from what it was. People say, "There should be a first-class coach" or "You can't work on it because it is too popular" or "You can't get a nice meal on it" et cetera, and that is true, but it is an awful lot better than it was. I use it frequently now in preference to the car.

Q632 Albert Owen: I do find that Arriva trains are leaving about two minutes before a London train gets into Crewe, and my big concern is that the emphasis is on Chester as a hub rather than integrating with Crewe as the main UK hub. I will just leave that thought with you. On air links, a huge success has been the Anglesey-Cardiff link. Some people are saying that it is over expectations. I thought a bigger plane would be flying by now anyway. Are there any plans for the development of that route and other routes? When we talk about Wales with cross-border, there is the possibility with Belfast and other destinations from Cardiff, and possibly linking up with Anglesey and with the four capitals of the United Kingdom.

Mr Morgan: I hate to use the expression "pilot phase" about an aircraft service, but it is a pilot phase. It is a three-year pilot. The first year has gone exceptionally well, and better than people had expected. I think the size of the aircraft and the level of fares was pitched about right. It has proved to that Valley is viable as a civilian airport. Alongside all the amazing things that are happening there on the military side, it is all good news for Valley at the moment, but then whether we should already be leaping ahead to run other services from there to Belfast or Dublin, et cetera, I do not know. We want to really make sure this gets past the pilot phase and is into the unsubsidised phase, building up a consistency and expectation that people will use Valley-to-Cardiff and Cardiff-to-Valley.

Q633 Albert Owen: Is there a development programme for that to happen now? The fear is that the subsidies is stopped and then it is not as attractive for other airlines to come in.

Mr Morgan: I certainly hope not. The pilot phase is there to prove the viability of the place, Valley. In a way, it is not central to North Wales. The people in Wrexham would not use it because it is far too far east, and they have much easier ways of getting to Cardiff. Was there enough population in Anglesey and Gwynedd that would use the service from Valley? Yes. The proof of the pudding so far is that at least from the western half of North Wales there has been a big boom, and for the people from Cardiff it is a big saver because it is one hour instead of about five hours.

Q634 Albert Owen: The other part of my question - and I am trying not to be too parochial - is the issue of linking Cardiff up with other United Kingdom capital cities. I think it is important for the whole Welsh economy that that happens. There seems to have been some contraction in that. Is that something you are looking at as a government, for air travel development in the future?

Mr Morgan: We have proposals to continue to subsidise certain routes. We cannot subsidise through the Route Development Fund, which helps to subsidise the Valley service. We are using that to subsidise services to Paris. We did it for Brussels, but there was not enough to keep it going. We use it strategically. You cannot use it to develop North Atlantic routes; that is not allowed under various treaties. We try to use it as constructively as we can to provide the services that people do need - not for fun, but for reasons of business or whatever. We think we are doing a reasonable job on that. On the North Wales service, of course we did receive a terrific shellacking from the environmental movement, who said this was wasting carbon dioxide, it was a terrible thing to do. The Sustainable Development Commission said, "We're never speaking to you again," and so forth, but we resisted that and said, "We don't care, we're going to do it," and we are doing it. I think the proof of the pudding has been in the support the service has had.

Q635 Albert Owen: And reducing road surface journeys between North and South.

Mr Morgan: Absolutely.

Q636 Chairman: I would like to end with one final question to Mr Drakeford. As a special adviser to the First Minister, are you engaged in raising awareness within the Cabinet on UK-wide issues? It occurs to me that on issues such as research councils and the NHS Constitution which the Prime Minister is going to be announcing at some stage, there is the potential for an input from Wales on the Joint Ministerial Committee. We have heard from the First Minister that that has been in abeyance for a long time, and I wondered whether there could be much more engagement with the cross-border issues, much more engagement beyond what we already know in terms of the bilateral meetings which one hears about and which do take place.

Mr Drakeford: Thank you, Chairman. I think special advisers can provide an early warning system in which ideas that are at a development stage in Whitehall or, indeed, in Wales can be communicated across the border where there is going to be an interest on either side. For the First Minister's Office, I tend to be more engaged with those cross-border issues that also cut across portfolios. Some of the ideas you have just mentioned will be of interest, not simply to an individual minister at the Welsh Assembly Government, but will need a more collective, cross-border portfolio type of response. Through the First Minister's Office, I am able, I hope, to provide that sort of contact at a preparatory stage in policy thinking and then, where necessary, to try to make sure that the range of Welsh Assembly Government ministers who are likely to have an interest in that topic get a chance, early on, to take advice from their policy officials, to develop their thinking, so that as much as possible we are able to have not just a last-minute alerting system, in which you are aware of what is going on, but a bit of cross-fertilisation in which ideas can be fed in more at a formative stage of policy.

Mr Morgan: My Private Secretary and me would try to set out which decisions involved me speaking to Gordon Brown, me speaking to Alistair Darling, me speaking to Paul Murphy. Or is it Edwina Hart speaking to Ben Bradshaw or to Alan Johnson, or is it Ann Lloyd speaking to Nigel Crisp or Sir Leszek, or is it, as quite often to start with, using the back channel of the special adviser to the special advisers, in order to see what to what extent this apparent conflict is in fact just a misunderstanding that can be dealt with by the special advisers?

Chairman: This has been, to quote Raymond Williams, "a journey of hope". Today has been a long journey. Could I thank you for your evidence today. I have almost forgotten what was said at the beginning, but I do remember two words that were mentioned by you: "pragmatic" and "practical", and we will go away and reflect on those very important words. We look forward to receiving further evidence. We are one-third of the way through this particular journey. We will be taking further evidence on health and we will be moving swiftly into education and transport in the autumn. We do look forward to receiving evidence from all three ministers with their respective portfolios. Thank you very much.