I now call on the party leaders to question the First Minister. First of all, the leader of the opposition, Leanne Wood.

Before I start my questions today, First Minister, I’d like to place on record our congratulations to the Welsh football team and the fans who did us proud in France last night. I could go on in that vein, but I’m going to move on to my questions now.

First Minister, you and I have crossed swords on many occasions about the national health service. Last night, I hosted a packed public meeting in Treorchy in the Rhondda, a community that’s due to lose its doctors’ surgery because the health board tell me there’s a shortage of doctors, which we all know about. Without getting into arguments about how many doctors we need, will you confirm that, if we leave the European Union on Thursday, the Welsh NHS will find it even more difficult to recruit doctors from overseas than it has been up until now?

Well, could I first of all express my slight annoyance that the leader of the opposition has got in before me when it comes to congratulating the Welsh football team? A wonderful result last night. The Cabinet Secretary, Ken Skates, was there—he’s looking well after such an evening as we saw. This is hugely important for Wales in terms of our profile around the world and the fact that there are fewer and fewer people who will say, ‘Wales? Where’s that?’ I think that’s hugely important. But the leader of the opposition raises a hugely important point, and that is, ‘What message are we conveying to doctors and other primary care professionals if we leave the EU?’ We know, for example, it is said that people who come here who are migrants put pressure on the NHS. I don’t buy that; they are mainly young, they’re working and they barely see a doctor. The reality is that they contribute, particularly those professionals who work in the NHS, to helping to care for sick people in Wales. The effect of a ‘leave’ vote would be to send the message to medical professionals, ‘Don’t come here. You can go anywhere else in Europe, but don’t think that you’re coming here’, and that will make it far more difficult to attract the medical expertise that we need into Wales.

Thank you for your answer, First Minister. You’ll be aware that, over many years now, Plaid Cymru has advocated incentives to attract doctors to Wales. One important factor, if we are going to attract people to come and live and work here as GPs while we train more doctors, is the state of the economy. How much more difficult do you assess it will be to attract GPs to those areas where vacancies are difficult to fill if the economy takes the dip that it’s predicted to if there is a ‘leave’ vote on Thursday?

Well, if you are a doctor qualified in the European Union and you are told, ‘You can travel to 27 other countries without the need for a visa, or come to the UK but you need a visa’, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s far easier to go to the other countries. So, the UK will become a more difficult place to recruit medical staff into. But, yes, of course, there will be an effect on the economy. I have spent much of my time talking to businesses, attracting investment into Wales, and the unemployment figures are evidence of how that has worked. This would be a self-inflicted wound. We would not be able to offer the same kind of certainty to business as Ireland would, or as France would, or as Germany would because we would not be able to say for years what kind of access to the European market businesses could enjoy if they were to be based in Wales, and that is bad for Welsh business.

I don’t disagree with you there, First Minister. We may well have disagreements on the future of the Welsh NHS and what needs to happen to safeguard it, but where we do agree is on our joint opposition to privatisation. Now, I wonder whether or not you think it’s more or less likely that the NHS will be opened up for privatisation in the event of a ‘leave’ vote. We know that right-wing politicians across a number of parties in Westminster are keen to sign up to TTIP, the transatlantic trade and investment partnership, which will, of course, make it easier to sell off public services to their mates. Do you think that we’ve got a better chance of avoiding the damage that could be caused to our NHS from TTIP by joining and remaining with other countries that can resist it?

Well, the reality is that the EU and the US are large trading blocks. The UK is much, much smaller. It comes down to how much muscle you have in the market at the end of the day. She and I are in the same position—we would not want to see any kind of privatisation in the NHS. Frankly, I see the figures in the ‘leave’ campaign—Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage—and I do not trust them with the future of our NHS. I do not trust them with the future of a publicly funded, publicly available NHS, and, from my perspective, I’m glad that the health service is devolved so that they can’t get their hands on the Welsh NHS. That’s hugely important. But, no, she and I, I am sure, will share some scepticism that the people who front that campaign have suddenly become converted to the virtues of the power of the state to ensure the welfare of its people.

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, identify with the sentiments of the leader of the opposition and the First Minister around the victory last night. It’s caused problems in my office because I had several members out there, and going in a camper van for a week is not a brilliant advert, with five football supporters, and now they’ll have to extend their time for the next match and, hopefully, a continuation through the championship. But, a huge congratulations to the Welsh fans on the way they’ve conducted themselves, and an even bigger congratulations to the Welsh team on the way they played last night.

First Minister, it is vital that we make improvements in autism services here in Wales. Last Saturday was Autistic Pride Day, and, in 2009, the Westminster Government passed an Act to improve autistic services in England. Part of our manifesto was to bring forward an Act in this Assembly term to seek the improvements here in Wales, so that health boards and other public bodies would know exactly the commitments they would have to make to the 34,000 who have this diagnosis and battle to get the help and support they require here in Wales. Will you commit to your Government bringing forward an Act to support autistic services here in Wales, similar to the one that was brought forward in 2009 in Westminster?

Well, it is something we are actively considering. I’m not saying we will simply replicate what happened in Westminster. I believe it needs consideration separately from other legislation, but, certainly, it is something that we’re willing to discuss with other parties in order to ensure that the services we have for autism are the best they can be.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. I’d like to pay tribute to my colleague Mark Isherwood who has championed the cause around autistic services here in Wales for many, many years. Whilst those discussions are going on, and certainly you didn’t rule out the opportunity to bring forward legislation, what—[Interruption.]

Carry on. [Laughter.]

What improvements can we see, while those discussions are being undertaken, around the legislation framework? Because there are 34,000 people in Wales who have a diagnosis and the National Autistic Society identify services to support them as ‘patchy’ here in Wales. So, what can we expect in the intervening time, when we will hopefully find agreement to bring forward legislation to enshrine the rights of people with a diagnosis to expect the service delivery here in Wales?

The first challenge, of course, is for there to be a diagnosis, and that can take some time. Because autism, as the Member knows, exists on a spectrum, there are some elements of autism that are not easily diagnosed, and the diagnosis is the first step. He’s asked about those who’ve been diagnosed. Well, we seek to ensure, of course, consistency across Wales—that’s why we ring-fenced mental health spending to make sure that there were more services available. That’s why, of course, we’ve provided more money for child and adolescent mental health services, because the demand on CAMHS was substantial and we recognised that demand needed to be met. We expect all local health boards to deliver a consistent service to support not just those who are diagnosed with autism, but those, of course, who care for them as well.

You introduced CAMHS into the line of questioning—I’d like to move into that area, if I may. Mental health services for young people in particular have seen a massive increase in the referrals to CAMHS—120-odd per cent since 2010. The waiting times in this particular area are horrendous, to say the least, with one in eight people who are referred waiting in excess of 40 weeks, when the Welsh Government’s own referral time target is 14 weeks. What action will the Welsh Government, the new Welsh Government, be doing to actually tackle these chronic waiting times, which, as I’ve said, have seen one in eight young people waiting in excess of 40 weeks for the help and support that they require, when in the last financial year the Welsh Government did cut the money to CAMHS by nearly 7 per cent?

Well, no, that’s not correct. Extra money has gone into CAMHS. CAMHS, in some ways, was the victim of its own success at the beginning. Once it was known that the service was there, GPs were far more able to refer into CAMHS, and, indeed, it’s right to say that demand did become quite high. We then took steps, of course, to make sure the funding was available in order to meet that demand, and I fully expect to see waiting times reduce over time, as the money flows through the system.

The leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Lywydd. Last night’s result shows that small countries can take on much bigger ones in the world and succeed, if they approach a task in the right spirit. I’m sure that Ken Skates will be an advantage to Wales whenever it’s playing around the world, if he can produce results like last night’s.

But, reverting to the question that was asked by the leader of the opposition, there is no reason, is there, why a points-based immigration system, as there is in Australia, should in any way restrict the number of doctors coming to the UK, but it might enable us to restrict those who don’t come for jobs, who compete with others. I wonder if he agrees with what Len McCluskey, the Labour Party’s largest financial contributor, is reported as having said in the papers today, that opening borders to eastern European countries in 2004 has led to

‘a gigantic experiment at the expense of ordinary workers’, and has led to

‘sustained pressure on living standards and a systematic attempt to hold down wages and cut the costs of social provision for working people.’

I haven’t seen those comments. At the beginning, he seemed to be advocating Welsh independence, talking about small countries. I’m sure he’ll explain his position a little later. I don’t believe that, and I’ll explain why: the reason why people are angry at the moment is they feel their jobs aren’t secure. They remember the days when there were jobs available, when they had long-term contracts, when there were pensions at the end, when there was strong trade union recognition. Those rights were stripped away consistently over many, many years, and what we see now is too many people in jobs where the wages are lower, where there’s casualisation, where there are zero-hours contracts and where trade union recognition is denied to them. We see that, of course, encapsulated in the last few weeks with Mike Ashley—that’s the sort of future that we don’t want to see on these benches, not by any stretch of the imagination. That’s what drives people’s anger. But, the reality is that the levels of migration will remain much the same as they are for the next few years at least, whatever happens. It’s not a question of migrants causing the problem; it’s a question of the fact that the law isn’t strong enough, and trade union recognition isn’t strong enough to make sure that people have the secure jobs that they need. I’ve no doubt at all that those people who advocate that we should leave the EU are not going to suddenly turn round and say, ‘Let’s go back to the days when there was strong trade union recognition, when we had higher wages, when we had longer-term contracts, we didn’t have zero-hours contracts, when people had pensions at the end of their jobs.’ I don’t see any of that coming from the ‘leave’ campaign.

The First Minister seems to be denying that adding a city the size of Cardiff to our national population every year has no impact on wages. I have to tell him that the Bank of England disagrees with that. In a report that was published at the end of last year, the Bank of England said that a 10 per cent increase in immigration leads to a 2 per cent fall in wages for unskilled and semi-skilled people. So, although it may be very well for professional classes and people who want cleaners and gardeners and the like to have unlimited immigration, for those at the bottom of the income scale, this is very bad news indeed.

He should look at his own benches when it comes to employing those from eastern Europe, shouldn’t he? I mean, the reality is, on the one hand, his party says, ‘Well, of course, you have to stop people coming in’, and on the other hand, quite happy to employ people when they are here. The reality is that, out of a population of 3 million in Wales, we have 47,000 people who are nationals of another EU state—it is a very small percentage. Many of those people are in skilled jobs: they are working in medicine, they are working in nursing, they are working in dentistry. I can show him, if he likes, in my own constituency, these people and the service that they contribute. The point is this: if you are a doctor and you wish to take your skills around Europe, you are far more likely to go somewhere where there are no barriers than a country where you have to fill in forms to work. It’s simple human nature. The more barriers we put in place to skilled workers, the less likely they are to come here.

Well, I think the First Minister has his head in the clouds on that, and huge numbers of ex-Labour voters take the same view. But it’s not just about immigration bearing down on the living standards of ordinary people. There are many other ways in which the EU does this as well—the cost of the common agricultural policy, for example, which probably adds up to £500 a year on the household budgets of ordinary people; £500 a year for green taxes and other climate change levies; and, because of the tariffs that the EU imposes upon the import of the clothing from other parts of the world, the average amount that people spend on clothing, in the average household, is about £150 a year more than it would otherwise be. So, in so many ways, the EU is against the interests of ordinary people, those who are the most vulnerable in our society.

I wonder if the leader of the Conservatives heard that, with the common agricultural policy. So much for his guarantees—he’s just heard it from UKIP that they want to get rid of the common agricultural policy. That means, of course, getting rid of subsidies. It means allowing in more New Zealand lamb at a cheaper price—that’s what it means—it means taking away the protections of our farmers, taking away the subsidies they receive. That’s what he means by that. He hasn’t thought through what he said—[Interruption.] He’s embarrassed now, the leader of the Conservatives, at being on the same side—I’m not surprised he’s embarrassed about being on the same side as UKIP on this. What he has just proposed, the leader of UKIP, would mean that farmers would lose money, they would not be able to export at a reasonable price to the European market, New Zealand lamb would come in cheaper because there would be no tariffs because of free trade, and our farmers would be obliterated. Now we know the truth of what the right are saying—that they want to make sure that our farmers lose the protection that Europe provides.