Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

I welcome Members to the public session of this afternoon's meeting. Please ensure that any phones are on silent. We've received two apologies today, from Neil Hamilton and from Jack Sargeant. There are no substitutions. Do Members have any declarations of interest that they'd like to make? No. Okay.

Item 4 on our agenda and papers to note. The minutes from the meeting held on 5 November—happy to agree the minutes as an accurate record? Good. They're accepted.

Item 5 is the implementation of the NHS Finance (Wales) Act 2014: letter from the Welsh Government. The committee undertook an inquiry into the implementation of the NHS finance Act during the summer term and I wrote to the Welsh Government with our findings. They've sent a detailed response back, which is, overall, positive. One specific area for follow-up is the review of the funding formula. In particular, the response is unclear firstly on the timescales and secondly on whether the Welsh Government is looking fundamentally at the fairness and appropriateness of the total allocation to each health board, rather than the allocation of additional funding.

A zero-based review at Hywel Dda highlighted that the allocations, which, as the letter shows, have been rolled forwards over many years, may not reflect the actual cost pressures and population pressures that the health boards face. We may want to make it clear that we'd like to see a fundamental review of the total allocation to each body, as was done through the zero-based review in Hywel Dda. So, the areas for keeping a watching brief are, as I see it, capacity and capability, escalation and the three-year planning timescale. Some of the specific issues touched on the creation of the new NHS executive, so any further work at a later date would need to take account of the plans of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee to look at the new NHS executive.

I suggest that we formally share any letter that I send with that committee to inform its wider work and future work programme. I'm not sure whether the auditor general has any comments.

I completely endorse what you've said.

Happy with that? Jenny.

So, how long might that take, this funding review? Because I know Cardiff and the Vale are constantly saying there are a lot of things that get referred to Cardiff and the Vale as a tertiary provider, and the money doesn't follow the patient. So, this is a challenge for them. I can imagine it's quite a contentious area.

It's not in the documents. That's an area that we could ask.

If there was a review of the funding formula, that's likely to take at least a year, isn't it, because you've got to get everybody to agree, just like with local government funding?

I think, in their most recent letter, they were suggesting 2021, or in the evidence that committee heard previously, 2021. But really the question is whether that's still with a narrow focus on certain aspects of the formula, or, if the committee is calling for something wider, it may well be that that is even more complex and will take longer. There's at least a four-year history to this now, I think, since the previous Public Accounts Committee got into this territory and made its original recommendations about the formula as well. I think that was some of the frustration from the committee when it took its evidence around how long it's already taken to get to this point, and how long it might well take to get agreement on something that, as you say, is going to be quite contentious.

Any other thoughts or comments? Okay. Are you happy with that course of action, then, if I write and seek clarification on the issue you've just raised and the other issues? Good, okay.

I now move a motion under Standing Order 17.42 to hold the rest of the meeting in private—for today and also the meeting on 26 November, I should say. Are Members content? Yes.