Welsh Affairs Committee — hearing of 23 June 2026: transcript & video

00:00 - 02:30

Speaker 5

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this oral evidence session of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. My name is Ruth Jones, I'm the chair of this select committee. Now today is the committee's second session into the inquiry into cross-border healthcare arrangements between England and Wales. And today we are hearing from executives from all seven Welsh local health boards, starting here with the three health boards who are closest to the border, who are on the border. And I want to say thank you for appearing before us in person.

It really is appreciated you coming today. I would say given the heat, we are relaxing dress code, so if people need to remove their jackets, then you are very welcome. There is water around and if you need more water, please indicate and clerks will sort that out for you. Similarly, if you feel you need a break because of the heat or whatever, then please again just indicate to us and we can do that. The other complication is that we also have votes coming this afternoon, so when the bell goes, please don't be alarmed, we will just disappear but we will come back.

So there we are. Now, we know that it's very rare to have all seven health boards at a session of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. So we are very grateful to have the opportunity to speak to you all and we do hope this isn't going to be the last time we get all seven of you together because it's really useful to us to have all seven as a true picture of what's going on in Wales. So this is also the first oral evidence session since the committee's report on prisons, probation and rehabilitation in Wales was published. And that included a chapter on the provision of healthcare and we talked about the jagged edge of healthcare with prisons, looking at and we recommended that the MOJ and the Welsh government review the effectiveness of the current health board model and consider the potential merits and demerits of moving to a national oversight model overseen by maybe NHS Cymru.

In the meantime, we did suggest that the health boards commit to making prisoner healthcare a standing item on their governance agendas and to publishing regular data releases on individual healthcare provision in prisons compared with your other population, other community. So, but today we are focusing on cross-border healthcare. So I'm going to just check, do any members have any interests to declare? No, okay, that's fine. In that case, let me begin and let me ask first of all if the panel would begin by introducing yourselves and say which health board and what position you start with.

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