FIRST minister Mark Drakeford has said that he does not blame NHS staff in Wales for waiting times - but rather those who could alleviate problems.

Alcohol, obesity and diabetes were the main areas he mentioned as contributory factors to problems.

Responding to a question from Mark Isherwood MS on the NHS in Wales the first minister said: "You look at the percentage of the people who end up in an A&E department because they have drunk too much - it is shockingly high.

"For people we rely on who work in A&E departments to spend an awful lot of their time responding to harm - that need not to have happened.

"It is the people who work there who seem to get the blame when those pressures become very hard to manage.

"Responsibility is shared amongst everybody."

Saying people could help relieve pressure on the NHS by managing their own alcohol use, as well as weight and diabetes, he added: "Every one of us has to do some things to relieve the health service of the burden it carries of people that end up needing its help for reasons that were avoidable."

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