Thank you again for the series of questions, and again the constructive engagement, both before today and during the day as well. I’m happy to say that the areas that we are looking to deal with today were in our minds before the Welsh Conservatives laid their debate plan. It’s a funny coincidence, isn’t it? But there we are.

In terms of the points you make about the previous campaign, let’s start with that. There have been lessons learned, both about the time that it took and about the messaging and how focused it was as well. So, certainly there’s that consistency to learn. There’s also something about—and it’s a point that you’ve made that’s been actively in our mind, and has been reinforced by partners as well—looking at the whole person and the whole country. So you look at the whole person as a GP; what else do they want to do? Some parts of Wales have been very good at doing this, and to be fair, in both north-west Wales and south-west Wales they’ve been much better at advertising everything that someone can get from living and working in that part of the world. So, there are some people that really would like the lifestyle that is on offer there. And for other people, it isn’t quite the same, but we’re getting a certain group of people who actually want to buy in to living somewhere as well, and that’s really valuable.

That person, of course—sometimes they do come with dependents, and other times they don’t. That’s part of the individualised point about not just the Wales offer, but about the recruitment champions: to understand what does this look like if you want to relocate to Wales, and what is important to you? It’s not just about the individual location, but of course, within a broader travel-to-work area. We know that lots of people travel a decent distance into work every day, and health professionals are no different in that sense. So, it is about understanding what will make a difference for that individual person, for the family context that they want to work in, and what is important to them as well. Of course, we are funding the national campaign on recruitment, and I’m looking forward to taking part in that at various points in time, but in particular seeing what the response is from our partners and the contact they will have with their members, and then ultimately seeing what that looks like in terms of outcomes for people wanting to relocate and to live and work here in Wales.

So, we haven’t had any particular input that take-home pay is an issue. There is something there about how to use incentives smartly, though. That’s why bonding is an issue, and in those areas where there is a real evidence base it will make a difference. Some of those areas, I imagine, would be rural parts of the country, but there other parts of Wales that aren’t rural where there are still particular challenges. So we need to think about how smartly we potentially use those incentives.

Now, on training numbers, a point you made, I want to be clear that I’m not going to set an increased target for training numbers. We need to fill the current places that we have. We have actually got a slightly better fill rate than other parts of the UK—we’re just over three quarters—but the challenge is that we’re still not filling our numbers. When we’re getting much nearer to that, I’m happy to look again at both what we need within our workforce, the regional setting that we have to work within, and to see whether it is then sensible to look at expanding that. But let’s get right what we want to do now: that is, fill the places we have and make sure we have a good quality of experience as well, because the recent survey on the experience of training, again shows that doctors themselves, in training, say that Wales is the best part of the UK for the very best training experience. That’s really important as well, so there are lots of things for us to positively sell.

One of the challenges that we do recognise is the primary care estate—not just the idea that if you’re the last man or woman standing in a practice, and you’ve got all of the liabilities, with an old building that is no longer fit for purpose, that can be a real burden—that can be a disincentive for people to buy into a practice. That’s something about the model as well. It’s also something about—and this is a challenge about how we use public resource in terms of remodelling and reshaping primary care, and if you look at almost all the examples of new primary care buildings that the Welsh Government and health boards have invested in, then it is a different model that we’re investing in, and it provides not just the different sort of quality and experience for the patient and the staff who work there, but almost always it provides a new experience, and not just a new experience but new services. And that’s really important, too, so we’re trying to make sure that the design that we want for primary care, in a more joined-up, integrated way, is actually what we’re then investing in—we’re investing in a part of the new primary care estate. So, again, that’s part of being smart for the future, making sure the two things are joined up.

In terms of the point about exposure to primary care, it’s regularly raised with us by partners. There’s some interesting work in Cardiff going on with the C21 programme, making sure that primary care exposure is definitely part of that—that it’s deliberate rather than accidental—and that also goes into our work with other professions as well. So, we’re looking at career frameworks, and I’ll have more to say on allied healthcare professionals this autumn as well. We’re looking at expanding training numbers for a range of different professions as well—a decision made by the previous Minister—and so we’re actually really serious about growing the workforce in areas where we need to. We recognise that’s an important part of what we’re doing, and it’s also about the model changing too—so not just the numbers, but how people work together, so not just community pharmacy, but all the different parts, the therapists and the scientists as well and what they can do, working alongside GPs. There is a changing attitude and a willingness from the GP community to engage with all of those people in really actively reshaping primary care, and I think clusters are going to be an important part of that, too.