Plaid Cymru will be supporting this motion and the amendment. The recommendations made by the Welsh Affairs Committee are sensible ones, and I hope that Governments on both sides of the border consider them. A cross-border flow of patients is, of course, one of the facts of life across Europe, and certainly worldwide. I’m sure it often makes sense for a patient to cross a border to receive the appropriate treatment. I could draw your attention to several examples of collaboration, for example the sharing of health facilities in that low-population area on the border between France and Spain in the Pyrenees; insurance brokers in the Netherlands contracting with hospitals in Belgium for specialist services; and French women choosing to give birth in Belgium because the hospitals there are closer to them and because of a perception of a better standard of care. So, this is nothing new and it benefits everyone that we get things right, and to organise the kind of collaboration that takes place.

There are a couple of matters that I’d like to raise. The first is that there are several proposals on the table to centralise emergency services in England, and it would appear that many more are in the pipeline. These will inevitably affect people in parts of Powys and north Wales especially, who will face even longer journeys in emergency situations and a corresponding increase in risk as a result. I do ask the Welsh Government to acknowledge this and to consider what arrangements can be made to mitigate the effects of these changes. This isn’t an argument against cross-border services. Remember what I said earlier—cross-border travel does happen when it makes geographical sense. But in a situation where people have to travel over three hours in north Wales for services across the border, then that’s not the same thing. It’s unacceptable. Distances of that kind suggest to me the need to plan a health service that’s more appropriate for a rural area.

The second point is that changes to services could benefit Wales if we have the right mindset here. Too often, I think, in the past, specialist services have been seen as something that the people of Wales must travel to England to receive, perhaps because we don’t have the population levels to justify such services. But do remember that more people from England come to see a GP in Wales than go the other way for primary care. But if we consider people in England who live on the border as prospective users of specialist services in Wales, then we could justify establishing, or developing or strengthening these kinds of services here, and bring funds into the service located here, as well as—and this is an important point—increasing the attractiveness of the NHS in Wales for prospective staff and so on. I would therefore ask the Government and the Cabinet Secretary to keep an eye on changes to services in England to see whether changes there give us scope to extend our services here. After all, as we heard from Eluned Morgan, our population here does add to the critical mass to help support and maintain services in England, and we could overturn that by offering more services to our neighbours.

Finally, I want to discuss those cross-border issues that don’t affect Wales and England but affect Wales and the rest of Europe. I’m talking about the rights that Welsh citizens have to access medical treatment in Europe by carrying a European health insurance card, and, of course, the reciprocal rights that European citizens have when they visit Wales. Even though I’m sure I can leave one party in this Chamber out of that consensus that’s developing on cross-border treatment, the rest of us, hopefully, continue to be supportive of cross-border Wales-European health services of this kind. So, I would seek that assurance that this kind of cross-border healthcare is not going to be left off the table in Government discussions.

In conclusion, as I say, Plaid Cymru will be supporting the motion today, and I note, in my final words, that if the rest of Europe can agree on the practicalities of cross-border healthcare, then certainly issues between Wales and England on a cross-border basis can also be resolved, for the benefit of people on both sides of the border.