Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. It’s a pleasure to take part in this important debate. Naturally, we’re talking about winter preparedness. As my fellow Members of the health committee will be aware, we have been continuing an inquiry over the past few weeks into this particular issue. Of course, it’s true to note, as we heard in evidence, that the health service in Wales is under huge pressure throughout the year, if truth be told, but there are some peaks during the winter months.

In the time that I have, I was going to note, following our amendment that notes the importance of the social care services in all of this, that there is a danger that those of us who work in the health service just to go on about the health service. But unless we get the social care services right, then it will undermine the efforts of the health service to get to grips with these particular issues. Specifically, therefore, we need to expand provision in the community in terms of our social care services in the first instance, to prevent some people from having to go to hospital in the first place. So, we need to improve care in the community. That’s down to our GPs and their teams, but it’s also down to social care in the community to enable people to remain in their homes. There’s excellent work going on, but we need more of that provision to prevent people from having to go to hospital in the first instance.

Then, the other issue: when people are ready to go home from hospital. We need to expand that provision as well in terms of social care to ensure that there is as little delay as possible in transfers of care into the home. So, I would like to see—and I’ve talked about this before—social workers in all GP surgeries and social workers on every ward in our hospitals. It would be their responsibility to arrange how that patient goes home promptly. There are different schemes in different places here in Wales. Projects in Caerphilly—I’ve heard of one where there’s collaboration and it encourages social workers to be located in our GP surgeries and our hospitals. It’s improving provision and improving patient experience of the health service as a whole, and that’s in terms of social care.

Having discussed the importance of social care services, what’s important in the winter months is that everyone who needs the flu vaccine does receive that vaccination. That includes everyone over 65 years of age, those with long-term conditions such as heart and lung conditions and diabetes and so on, and also the staff in the health service and social care. We received plenty of evidence that the average number of staff in the NHS that received the flu vaccine could be relatively low in some areas. So, we need to persuade those people because, ultimately, we want to keep our staff healthy as well.

My final point in the time that is available to me: I’m going to talk about, beds because the system is under pressure because of a lack of capacity. One of those is in terms of beds—yes, in our hospitals, but also beds in community settings and in residential homes and so on. I’ve been talking about a lack of beds for many years. People always accuse me of oversimplifying the problem because it’s about more than just about a bed. But ultimately, most of the time we just need a bed, don’t we? You can talk about what kind of bed that is, and who is going to staff that, but ultimately, we’ve seen an erosion in the number of beds available in our health service, and in terms of social care. There’s been a decrease in the number of beds available and yet there’s an increase in the number of patients. Well, that doesn’t add up, does it? David.