I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate this afternoon. It’s an opportunity to look at an issue that affects all health services across the whole of the United Kingdom, and indeed across the whole of the western world, about creating a modern staffing environment and the multidisciplinary teams that form the backbone of the health service in whatever western country you happen to live in. But, Wales does seem to have had a perennial problem in attracting and, importantly, retaining staff to make sure that those multidisciplinary teams can continue to work and deliver the service. Very often, there’s little or no point in having 90 per cent of that team intact when the one important component, the 10 per cent, is away, because the whole team falls down then.

I really did learn that when we were in the third Assembly, when the health committee then did an inquiry into stroke services, and Dai Lloyd came along with me to the Cardiff Royal Infirmary stroke unit, which I think we’re all very pleased has been replaced, because the facilities there were very antiquated—it’s been moved up to Llandough now. Just by witnessing how that team interacted with each other, we saw if you just took one cog out of that multidisciplinary team, then the bulk of the rehabilitation that was on offer to the patients who presented basically was just put on hold and the patient was just left in limbo, through no fault of the team, but through maybe illness, absence or just an inability to attract that key worker, such as that key speech therapist, as Suzy Davies touched on—that key individual who can drive forward the rehabilitation and the reinvigoration of that individual’s life.

This debate today, which was opened by Angela Burns, really is looking now to the Cabinet Secretary for health to try to map out, with a five-year plan, what he wants to achieve by addressing some of the demons—let’s call them that—that have really blighted the health service here in Wales, about the attraction that the health service needs to have to retain people in a very stressful environment that has people working at the top of their game, rolling up their sleeves and delivering for the public good, but who ultimately are feeling that, year on year, week on week, day in, day out, that pressure is getting more and more like a pressure cooker environment. They’re either walking away from that environment or they’re having to take long bouts of time off for sickness and they’re not getting the support that would allow them to function at the top of their game. I do believe that this is an opportunity now, with the election behind us and we’re in the early stages of this Government, for some of these real tough nuts that haven’t been cracked over successive governments to be addressed. The important thing here is to make sure that we create an environment that people can have confidence in to look after their long term interest, create an ability to progress their careers, but, above all, respond to the ever increasing demands that the health service faces day in, day out today here in Wales and, indeed, across the United Kingdom.

It was in yesterday’s Plenary session that Julie Morgan touched upon the fact that the population of Cardiff each year is expanding by between 10,000 and 15,000 people. That is a huge increase in just one area—in an area that can most probably reach out and attract new people. But, when you spread that out across the rest of Wales and, in particular, into some of the more rural areas of Wales there is a real issue about getting people to travel to the furthest parts of west Wales, for example. Withybush hospital, as my colleagues, Paul Davies and Angela Burns, have championed here, is finding it difficult to fill those rotas and fill those rosters. It just cannot be good enough that services are temporarily suspended for another couple of months because this issue has reared its head again. There must be a solution that can be put in place by the Government who do have the mandate to deliver a functioning NHS here in Wales that people want to work in.

It was only yesterday that we actually had the figures that, regrettably, show that there’s been a 15 per cent decline in students going forward into medicine here in Wales. That decline has been across the United Kingdom, I accept that, but here in Wales that decline is more marked than other parts of the United Kingdom. That must be a source of great concern when you think over the last five or 10 years the various initiatives that have come forward to try and make medicine a more attractive profession, a more attractive way of bringing people into Wales—we’re not doing that. We’re not seeing that happening on the ground by those very figures. But, importantly as well, whilst it’s important to reflect on attracting staff, retention is a really, really important part of, surely, what a modern workforce should be about. We invest and the Government invest and the health boards invest a huge amount of money in developing the skills and talents of individuals in a highly complex environment and, yet, very often through poor management and neglect, those individuals walk away from that career, and a career that very often is only 50 per cent the way through or maybe even three quarters of the way through what potentially could offer so much more back. So, I hope the Cabinet Secretary will use the opportunity to respond to the genuine points that have been put forward, because he does have a new mandate. He has a mandate to deliver and I do hope that he will engage in giving us some feeling of how he will take forward the proposals of the new Government in addressing some of these long-term structural problems that have been at the very heart of providing a modern twenty-first century health service here in Wales.