Thank you for the series of points and questions. If I can go back to, I guess, some of the starting gambit—I think it’s rather unfortunate that, sometimes, the impression given, when you talk about broader improvements in healthcare, is that all of this is inevitable and that the role of the delivery plans and the implementation groups have had no impact at all. I don’t think that’s a fair or reasonable assessment. Certainly, if you don’t want to take my word for it, you could go and ask the clinicians involved in that work, each of the national clinical leads, and you could go and ask members of the third sector engaged on the implementation groups, for example, about the value of that work and impact they’ve had on actually setting priorities with the health service, so it’s genuine engagement and isn’t just about the service deciding for itself what it will do. You’ve got that direct representation from the third sector. It’s one of the strengths of the approach that we take, actually, that we’ve got the third sector there as critical friends, but who are still able to help set the agenda, and they recognise the impact that we’ve made. For example, at lunchtime, I wasn’t able to see Dr Lloyd there—sadly, he had to run away before I could see him—but at the British Lung Foundation event that you were at and other Members, too, there was a real recognition of the work that’s been done with them, for example, in the major health plans that they’re involved and engaged in. They recognise that that delivery plan and the implementation of it is an important part of service improvement. Indeed, the money they’ve had has been important too—not to, say, design a strategy, but for some of that money to then be used to deliver on recognised priorities. A good example is one that you’ve mentioned—the diabetes implementation group. They’ve actually had structured education and patient education as one of their five key priorities this year. As you’ve highlighted, we recognise that not enough people take up the opportunity for structured education, particularly at the point of diagnosis, when there’s a real window of opportunity to try and get someone to think about their condition and how they can manage it for themselves. So, there’s absolute recognition that structured education, not just on diabetes, provides an important part of service improvement and outcome improvement and patient experience improvement. There is something there again, and it’s a continuing theme that, in fact, you’ve raised yourself in discussions both within this Chamber and outside, about the role that the citizen can play and should play in helping to manage and improve their own health and how we help that person to make different healthcare choices. Whether it’s about avoiding diabetes, which, again, is another part of the five priorities that they’ve set this year, but also for type 1, where you can’t avoid having it—you either have it or you don’t—it’s about how you help that person to manage their condition as well. So, I recognise the point that’s made and Diabetes UK are indeed involved and engaged in the diabetes implementation group. They have a number of good and positive things to say, as well as honest and constructive criticism to make too. I welcome both approaches from the way the third sector engage with us.

I’ll deal with your point about the leadership for the seven health boards and the three trusts. I made the decision that we discussed in this Chamber before for targeted intervention to take place in three health boards. At the same time, of course, the Welsh ambulance service moved down in the intervention status because they’ve made real and significant improvements, which I hope that Members across the Chamber will recognise on perhaps a more consistent basis. I’m confident that we’ll be able to put in place a range of support and accountability to see real improvement made. The assurance the Member should take is that this is a real process—were it not, then we could have avoided trying to escalate three health boards for political purposes. That didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen because the process is real and it’s robust, and the role of the regulator is a real and important part of making that real too. So, if you see those organisations improving, it will be because real improvement has taken place. We’re always looking for improvements in leadership and management, and the delivery plans themselves have helped to deliver some of that clinical leadership within the service as well. I certainly think that each of the national clinical leads have had a real impact in improving parts of their service areas too. It works alongside, for example, the 1000 Lives improvement programme too.

I’ll just deal, before I finish, with a point about data. We recognise that there are areas where data are messy and not as clean as we want them. There are challenges when coding, for example, a range of different issues, but the data really matter to us. The data and the process of clinical audit, too, have been a really important factor, for example, in the heart disease delivery plan and the cardiac area, and looking at what those audits tell us. It’s a really useful source, not just what they can tell us about accountability, but how they can drive service improvement, and not just by comparing ourselves on an audit basis within Wales, but actually these are significant surveys that take place across England and Wales, and certainly Northern Ireland and Scotland regularly take part in the same trials, also. We’re not just looking at ourselves within the seven health boards and three trusts in Wales; we’re looking at what data can tell us and what that improvement journey could look like.

So, there are real challenges to improve upon and that’s recognised. We’ve done a range of things to improve that too; for example, when you look at mortality reviews, that’s a definite improvement that we’ve made over the course of last term. But, there are also plenty of high-quality data, and one of the things we have seen from the delivery plans is that, where you can actually look at the high-quality data and look at research that’s going on in that area, it often helps to further improve clinical practice and that potential for innovation too. So, there are further questions to ask and points to be made about continuing to improve the quality of the data we have—not being complacent about it. We also have a good story to tell in a whole range of areas and I don’t want to lose sight of that in either this statement or in the work we’ll do in the years ahead.