Cabinet Secretary, I agree with you; we all want to strive for safe and compassionate care for all our constituents and people in Wales, and I therefore welcome the statement that you’ve given today, particularly on the attempts to ensure that we get that during the winter pressure months. Can I also join you in praising the professionalism and dedication of our staff? I declare an interest in that my wife is one of those members of the front-line staff. But, it is important that they actually are recognised for the hard work that they put in, and I join Angela Burns in a couple of points. I am concerned about the workforce levels, particularly, sometimes, when we see sickness levels increased as a consequence of the pressure that puts on the remaining staff, and I would like to have, perhaps, consideration of how that will be tackled, particularly also in relation to district nurses, because district nurses—as you identified, there are more in the community, but there is a shortage of district nurses across the areas and, as a consequence, I have seen directly that there are sometimes difficulties in getting district nurses to come out and support individuals, because of the pressures upon them.

On your statement, a couple of points: you were talking about the extra beds. I am going to ask the same question about the staffing levels and the resource levels for those extra beds, because what I don’t want—. I’m often told by the health boards, ‘More beds and we’ll fill them quickly’. I don’t want to see more beds being filled up and then just being stagnant, because delays in transfer of care sometimes in my patch are not as good, perhaps, as they are across Wales. It’s important that we put the staffing levels in to ensure that those are used effectively.

You talk about an improved use of social workers, not more social workers. Are we going to be looking at more social workers based in hospitals so we can get those care packages rather than an improved use of social workers? You mentioned additional step-up, step-down services in your statement, and that the beds are also used as a step up for people in the community to avoid hospital admission, but who’s going to actually admit them into those units? Who’s going to make the decision as to whether they go into those units? Will that be a GP? Will that be a nurse? Will it be the individual? Who is actually going to be deciding whether they go into those particular units and those particular beds?

I also want to perhaps ask questions about the elective surgery we often see postponed or cancelled. Last year in my own health board area they cancelled several elective surgery cases. For a couple of months, as a consequence, we saw patients having further delays and experiencing further pain and anguish whilst they waited for the next surgery to come through. What sort of indication has been given by the health boards that they are taking those matters into consideration and that patients will not be experiencing those lengthy delays? We often see them going up to 36 weeks, and sometimes beyond the 36-week target, but I don’t want to see these patients going beyond simply because they haven’t considered how they will tackle elective surgery during that winter period.