I am pleased to return to what I hope will be a positive debate on the health service. Over the past weeks, I, like many other people, have been dealing with constituents who are greatly concerned about the fact that there is increasing pressure on the local surgeries, that they have to wait for 10 days or a fortnight for an appointment with a GP, and that the services in the local hospital have been reduced. It’s important that we here acknowledge that this arises directly from the decisions of the Welsh Government.

Whether good or bad, decisions that we have made over the years are responsible for this, and not immigrants from outside as has been suggested in debates over the past weeks. You are much more likely to be treated by somebody from outside Wales and outside the United Kingdom as part of the workforce that is needed from outside the United Kingdom than lying in a hospital bed side by side with an immigrant. That’s what we’re discussing here.

I believe that the Plaid Cymru debate acknowledges two things: that we did actually take the wrong turning, as it were, as regards the recruitment and retention of GPs in Wales. Another false move, if you like, is the way we treated some of our community hospitals, and the failure, particularly in rural areas, to recognise that we needed community hospitals, perhaps in a new guise—not like the old cottage hospitals—but that we needed some kind of institution in the rural areas to sustain the network of local hospitals that people appreciate but also enrich public health.

One example of this was the undoubted success, in my view, of the bargain that was struck between Plaid Cymru and the former Labour Government to establish an intermediate care fund. At the time, the Government didn’t believe that there was a need for such a fund, to provide for integration between health services and social services. By now, that fund is acknowledged as something which has been a success and has led to a number of people being able to stay in their homes, and been the means of integration between health and social services. So, I believe that we missed an opportunity to build on our community hospitals.

There are opportunities to improve. The mid Wales joint partnership was established recently by the former health Minister, and is beginning to bear fruit. It’s starting to bring new ideas to the fore to see what hospital and primary care services can do in rural areas. Examples have been portrayed during meetings of that joint partnership of places beyond Wales—Scandinavia and North America—but we don’t need to go any further than Yorkshire to see what can be done with community hospitals in Wales. In Pontefract, a brand new community hospital was established with 42 beds in order to reduce the pressure on the acute wards. That new hospital that’s only just opened, just under a year ago, has already saved money and enables patients to return from tertiary hospital treatment more successfully. So, these are the examples of what community hospitals in my constituency, such as in Blaenau Ffestiniog and in Tenby, could do in the future.

Looking at Tenby specifically, this is another example of a hospital that lost its minor injuries unit, unfortunately, as it was closed for safety reasons—we’ve heard of this a number of times—but it has returned in pilot form last Easter and it was a sweeping success, and the local GPs also wish to see this being established.

So, in rural areas—for example, 60 per cent of the population in Ceredigion and 53 per cent of the population in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr are further than 15 minutes away from their GP—we need to seriously consider how we can establish a network of community hospitals.

During this debate we are looking to reconsider the way our community hospitals and GPs can deliver services, particularly in rural areas. Perhaps we should set aside some of the debates and arguments from the past and look forward to a more affirmative and positive attitude from this new Government.