Thank you for your series of points, comments and questions. When we talk about the system being under pressure, it does mean that the job of staff is made more difficult and more demanding, and that also has an impact on the patient experience, too, and we should all reflect and recognise that we’re talking about this general area. I don’t, for one minute, say that Members shouldn’t ask awkward questions; I think it’s entirely appropriate, on occasion, to challenge the use of language as to whether it’s appropriate. In terms of the questions that you asked and the points that you made, I think, again, it’s about seeing health and social care as a whole system. It isn’t just the secondary care part, it isn’t just the ambulance service and the paramedics, it isn’t just the emergency department; it’s the whole hospital system and it’s the flow through that system and actually what needs to be done, not just in triage at the point when someone arrives at a hospital, but actually what is done before that, whether that’s with the ambulance service or whether that’s actually in primary care as well. And we are objectively getting better at doing that as a system.

I look forward to publishing more statistics and more information over the course of this winter on what is being done—for example, in the next quarter’s statistics on the ambulance service, the work they’re doing to see, hear and treat people and discharge them either on the phone or at the scene to prevent journeys being undertaken unnecessarily into the hospital system; the work that is being done across primary care with pilots similar to the one, for example, that I’ve mentioned previously on Ynys Môn, but also in other parts of Wales, with similar systems and advanced care to keep people out of hospital and get them out quickly if they do go in. So, people understand who their most vulnerable individuals are and often those are elderly people, as you rightly point out.

We’ve already seen, as I indicated at the committee, that there are, I think, approximately 300 extra beds in the system that are being delivered as part of the response to winter in terms of the plans that health boards have. That’s a normal part of planning. That means they scale down elective activity: that’s entirely normal too. But, even last winter, we saw more elective activity than had taken place than in the previous winter. I won’t forecast and give you any sort of guarantee it will happen now, because it would be wrong of me to say what will happen with unscheduled care not knowing what may happen in terms of the flu or in the weather and the pressures that will come here. But I expect to see progress made on elective care in the remaining quarter of this financial year. I expect to see the system being resilient in terms of unscheduled care too, and that will mean some of our resources and people are redirected to an appropriate point in time at any point in the health and care system. In many ways, what keeps the health part of the system going is the fact they are able to work effectively with social care and the third sector in getting people into and out of health facilities for care and back into their own home with packages of care where it is appropriate. And in that place, we are in a much better place in Wales than other parts of the UK, because we plan jointly between health, social care and the third sector. Undoubtedly, I will answer more questions in this Chamber and in committee on the reality of winter on the ground for patients and for staff.