Notifying the Assembly of Changes to the Cabinet

Yesterday I carried out a minor reallocation of Cabinet ministerial responsibilities. Brian Gibbons becomes the Minister for Health and Social Services. Jane Hutt becomes the Business Minister, with overall strategic responsibility within the Government for communications, equal opportunities, liaison with Westminster and co-ordinating the Assembly Government’s change programme.

I have decided to split the job of Business Minister and chief whip. Karen Sinclair will therefore continue as the Government’s chief whip and will attend Cabinet meetings, although no longer as a member of it. I am grateful to her for the work that she has undertaken in helping this Labour administration to translate the manifesto on which we were elected into measures on the floor of the Assembly with a majority of one. That we have lost so few votes under these circumstances is a tribute not only to group discipline but also to the respect felt for the chief whip.

Jane Hutt has made a huge contribution to developing health and social services in a devolved Wales, as any fair-minded Assembly Member will recognise. She now hands on the baton of responsibility for health and social services to Brian Gibbons, with the downward trajectory of long waits in the NHS firmly established. The corner has clearly been turned. On the 90 per cent of NHS activity that does not involve waiting lists—the public health agenda, the primary care agenda, and accident and emergency services—the five years and eight months that Jane Hutt has served have put us at the forefront of health reform. I have now asked Jane to take on another key Cabinet position where she can help co-ordinate and communicate our agenda and translate it into practical action.

If anyone has served an apprenticeship to be Minister for Health and Social Services in Wales, it is Brian Gibbons—or should I say Dr Brian Gibbons—with his unique experience of having served as a general practitioner in the heart of the Valleys for several decades and having been Deputy Minister to Jane Hutt for two years, and, more recently, to Andrew Davies. I commend this reshuffle to the Assembly.