Thank you for that, and I apologise. This surgery, the Ruabon Medical Centre, is only the latest to announce that it will be ending its NHS contract with the health board because it’s unable to fill two vacant doctor posts. Last month, it was the Rashmi practice in Colwyn Bay. Over the last year, we’ve seen the same in Prestatyn, Rhuddlan, Wrexham, Conwy, and the British Medical Association’s Dr Charlotte Jones, general practice committee chair, has said:

‘Surgeries handing back their contracts to the health board is a real time demonstration of how some general practices are at breaking point and see this as the only solution open to them.’

The north Wales local medical committee warned at a meeting in the Assembly in June 2014 that general practice in north Wales was facing crisis, with several practices unable to fill vacancies, and many GPs considering retirement. Early this year, GPs in north Wales wrote to the First Minister, accusing him of being out of touch with the reality of the challenges facing them. How, therefore, do you respond to the concern expressed by the Royal College of General Practitioners in the Assembly in June this year, that the multidisciplinary team model being introduced instead in north Wales by the health board is needed, but it’s based on an overseas model with a higher ratio of GPs to other disciplines, and that it will lose the holistic view and continuity provided by GPs, damaging the well-being of patients, and that the health board needed to step up in times of—should step up—shouldn’t wait for a crisis to step up? It should have stepped up well in advance, as should the Welsh Government, given the years of warnings it has received.