Questions now from the party leaders. The leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch yn fawr, Lywydd. First Minister, you’ll be relieved to know I’m not going to ask you about the European Union today, as I don’t wish to appear typecast. And, anyway, I had the opportunity to do so yesterday, and will do later on today.

I’d like to ask about the health service, in particular in relation to GPs. He will know that GP numbers are broadly static, yet there’s a rising demand for their services. And, in fact, in 2014—the latest figures for which I’ve been able to find—we had the lowest number of GPs in Wales per 1,000 people in the UK. Some 17 per cent of GPs have sought guidance or advice for work-related stress in the last two years, 84 per cent worry they may miss something serious in a patient due to workload pressures, and 56 per cent plan to leave general practice or reduce hours in the next five years. Does he accept there’s a growing crisis in morale amongst GPs in Wales?

No, we’ve been funding GPs, and, indeed, other health professionals who work in primary care, at a level that we think is right and appropriate. For example, if you look at social care, we fund social care at 6 per cent per head higher than England does, which is why we’ve not had the ‘humanitarian crisis’, to use the words of the Red Cross, that England has had within its NHS. We are also committed to recruiting additional GPs. We have more GPs in Wales than ever before, and that’s why, of course, we have the recruitment campaign that was launched last year.

I’m relieved he’s not asking me about Europe, because he did appear at the press conference that was held yesterday with myself and the leader of Plaid Cymru, as a member of the audience. I do thank him for the fact he is such a fan he cannot bear to be away from the two of us even for a day. [Laughter.]

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, but, in the case of the First Minister, I’m happy to say that isn’t so. [Laughter.]

But it’s no answer to the question I posed a moment ago that things are worse in England than they are in Wales. It is true that there is a pincer movement here of increasing demand on GPs, and with GP numbers not keeping pace with those rising demands. NHS funding on GPs in Wales, as part of the Welsh Government’s budget, is down since 2004, from 10 per cent of the total to 7.5 per cent. The Royal College of General Practitioners say that more GP spending could actually save the NHS £90 million a year by 2020 if we reprioritised GPs within the Welsh Government’s NHS budget. So, is that something that the First Minister is prepared to consider?

Well, our £43 million primary care fund is supporting that, with the emphasis on new and improved ways of delivering services. That involves delivering services, and developing the services of nurses and pharmacists, physiotherapists, and social workers, to work alongside GPs. The answer lies not simply in increasing the number of GPs; it lies in ensuring that there are sufficient professionals available in a particular setting—we see it, for example, in Prestatyn—so that people can be referred to the appropriate professional, rather than piling all the pressure onto GPs, when people could go somewhere else.

The First Minister will also know that, in some areas of Wales, patient pressure, in terms of numbers, on doctors’ surgery sessions is now excessive. Can he give us any idea what he thinks is the maximum number of patients that a GP can reasonably deal with in a working day? Particularly in relation to home visits for patients who are housebound, the Royal College of General Practitioners tell me that, in certain instances, people are having to wait up to 20 hours for a visit, which is clearly unacceptable. Some doctors are dealing with 120 patients per session instead of 50 or 60. Exactly how many does he think is reasonable for doctors to see in a session and how does he expect the Welsh Government to meet its six-hour target, which is currently being breached left, right and centre throughout the country?

It depends on the patients who come through the surgery on that particular day. For some people, they can be seen in five minutes; for other people, it takes longer. It depends on the nature of the patient. GPs will have a good idea of the communities that they work in and the patients that they’re seeing during the course of that day. But the point is, the last thing we want to do is to funnel more and more people towards GPs. We say to people, ‘Choose well. Go and see a pharmacist first. If not, then go and see a community nurse or a GP practice nurse. Then, and only then, is the GP somebody to go and see.’

There are issues of consistency in GP services across Wales. That much is true. Some offer broader services than others, they offer longer hours than others, and that’s why it’s so important to work with the royal college and others to make sure that we see greater consistency in terms of service delivery in the future.

The leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Lywydd. First Minister, I’m not going to ask you about article 50 or the White Paper that we jointly launched yesterday because there are statements on both those matters coming later. Instead, I’d like to ask you about matters relating to public services, for which you are responsible. Do you accept that many rail commuters on the Valleys lines in particular are facing a touch-and-go situation when it comes to getting to work on time?

She says ‘services that we are responsible for’, but we’re not responsible for rail services. We will be from next year and we welcome that. We want to make sure that the Wales and borders franchise properly serves people with decent quality rolling stock—they don’t have that at the moment—more frequent trains and reasonable fares to pay. Those, amongst other things, will be our guiding principles as we look to let the franchise from next year onwards.

So, it’s nothing to do with the Government then? First Minister, it is a touch-and-go situation for many workers, and I know that because I face regular delays, as does everyone else who uses the service. We never know when there are going to be delays or cancellations. In fact, there was a delay to my train coming to work this morning. It’s a daily occurrence. People are feeling as though they’re not getting value for money and, more importantly, that those trains can’t be relied upon. For years, Arriva has tried to make the service work by pushing the current trains to the max and those trains, as you will know, are very, very old. It looks to those of us who use the service like that service is at breaking point. If it does break, First Minister, you will have to do something. Is it acceptable to you that the overcrowding situation in the south of Wales is the fastest growing in the UK outside of London?

I’m glad that the growth is increasing, but the leader of Plaid Cymru doesn’t mention the metro. The whole point of the metro is to make sure that we have more frequent services and better rolling stock, that we don’t have 40-year-old refurbished stock running on the Valleys lines with no air conditioning, and that we don’t have a situation where the track operators and the stock operators blame each other for delays. So, yes, when we get control of this from next year onwards, we do want to see a metro system, one that’s extended in the future and one that offers a far better service than has been available so far. She will have seen the comments from the economy Secretary in terms of his views on the profits that Arriva have made, despite the below-par services, as she rightly points out, that have been on offer so far.

First Minister, we can’t afford to wait for the metro; it could be years before we see the metro coming on stream. My predecessor as Plaid Cymru leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones, was a strong critic of the current rail franchise contract for Wales. He said that the way it had been drawn up—yes, by an agency of the UK Government—had led to a decade of overcrowding, and that verdict still stands today.

Last Friday, the Welsh Affairs Select Committee said that new trains would be needed and they described the 2003 contract as a huge mistake. Commuters are not prepared to put up with another poorly negotiated franchise. Your Government will be responsible for the next franchise and we already know that the planning for that is under way, but, to date, you’re yet to make clear to this Assembly what rolling stock will be provided, and I’m talking quantity here as well as quality. We’ve not been told if there are going to be new trains or carriages, if they’ve been ordered yet, if they’re going to be new trains or if they’re going to be second hand or even third hand. Will you tell us today what trains are going to be available for the next franchise and will you give a cast-iron guarantee that the mistakes of the past contract won’t be repeated?

We have no intention of repeating the mistakes made by the UK Government with regard to the last contract. She rightly refers to what the former Member for Ynys Môn, Ieuan Wyn Jones, said. He was in charge of transport for four years, but there was little that he could do because of the fact that it wasn’t devolved. His frustration was shared by me. Better trains, more frequent trains and more modern rolling stock.

One of the problems that we have now is that, actually, it’s almost impossible to procure diesel trains—they’re seen as ancient technology. So, we have to make sure that we see electrification. We have to see the commitment, for example, from the UK Government that it will electrify from Cardiff to Swansea to keep the promise that they made and which they are now reneging on. We have to see the electrification of the north Wales main line as well. That’s hugely important.

In terms of what the trains will look like in the future, at the very least they’ll be hybrids—diesel-electric. But, we have to make sure that that electrification is taken through. [Interruption.] They won’t get ordered—. The franchise is part of the negotiation. The whole point is that you have the negotiation on the franchise, and, as part of the franchise negotiation, you specify what stock the operator has to actually use. That’s part of the franchise negotiations.

She asks a question—a fair question: ‘Will the service be better?’ The answer I give is ‘yes’. I’ve said that, and I’m sure she’ll hold me to account on that over the next few years.

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. When you come third in the leaders’ rankings to ask questions, you normally assume that the topic of the day will have been asked by one of the other two, so I also give the health warning that I’ll leave my European questions until later on in the afternoon. I would like to ask you, First Minister, specifically about the Estyn inspection report that has been brought forward today. You not unreasonably said when you first became First Minister in 2009 that you were going to make education your priority. Just before Christmas, we had the Programme for International Student Assessment results that showed no progress at all in Wales’s rankings when it comes to international statistics. Today, the Estyn inspection report shows a damning indictment of failure of leadership and, in particular, excellence in teaching, especially in the secondary sector, where, if you choose a secondary school in Wales, you’ve got less than a 50 per cent chance of going to a school that’s got excellent or good teaching practice. Do you think that’s acceptable after nearly seven years of being First Minister?

There are two things here to bear in mind. First, teachers’ pay and conditions have not been devolved yet—they will be next year. That gives us the opportunity to put in place a proper training package with pay and with conditions that will attract good teachers to Wales and improve the training of teachers in Wales. We needed that package. Scotland has done it—there’s no reason why we should not be able to do it.

Secondly, the report makes the point—which is correct, because we saw it in PISA, actually—that not enough is done to stretch those at the top end of the academic league. That’s exactly what PISA showed. The reason why the PISA figures were disappointing is pretty much because we don’t do well at the top end. Other countries do better at the top end. If you look at the middle bands, actually we’re very comparable, but it’s the top end. So, that report has actually said to teachers, ‘Look, you need to do more to make sure that those who are the higher achievers academically are pushed more to do even better’. I’m glad that the report has actually shown that to make sure that teachers and politicians understand that that’s what needs to be done.

I heard in your answer, First Minister, that you talked about pay and conditions in Scotland. Actually, Scotland’s results in the PISA rankings collapsed, and that is no example to follow, I’d suggest to you, First Minister. You’ve had initiative after initiative since your tenure as First Minister, and, indeed, since Labour have been running education, since 1999. We’ve had teacher workload initiatives; we’ve had the regional consortia that have come in for special criticism today from Estyn, showing that there’s poor performance there with collaborative working. The secretary of the National Union of Teachers has said that there are significant barriers to improving teachers’ performance in schools and access to best practice. Do you recognise these significant barriers, First Minister? In particular, I go back to the point again: we’ve had initiative after initiative under your leadership, and yet we’re still getting Estyn reports seven years into your tenure as First Minister and you’ve set education as a priority. You’re failing, First Minister.

You know, to be lectured by somebody who stood for election on the basis of cutting education spending by 12 per cent—by 12 per cent—is unbelievable. To be lectured by somebody whose party is failing to build schools in England—failing to build schools in England—while we are building schools in Wales; to be lectured by somebody who wanted to bring back grammar schools—grammar schools—chucking most children onto a scrapheap; no, no, no I’m not going to be lectured by him.

Of course there are issues in the education system. We see improvement and we’re seeing it. Why? GCSE results are improving. A-level results are improving. We’re seeing more schools that are coming out of a category of being underperforming. We’re seeing the support that teachers need. Estyn has pointed out the good practice as well. It’s not all bad. It’s not a ‘damning indictment’—what a load of nonsense. It’s shown that there are particular weaknesses that need to be focused on, and they are being focused on, but we know that our schools are going in the right direction, with proper funding, and not being starved of funding by his party as elsewhere in Britain.

Well, you always know when you strike a nerve with the First Minister: he brings up statistics that don’t stand up to any scrutiny at all. We’re talking about the here and now and the Estyn report that was delivered today, which is a damning indictment of your stewardship here in Wales. If you take one local education authority—Cardiff—nearly 50 per cent of headteachers have left their posts in the last three years—50 per cent. Nearly 50 per cent have left. Initiative after initiative have I highlighted you’ve brought forward, and you are failing to drive up standards here in Wales. Kids get one chance to go to school, First Minister. You said education is the priority; you have failed to deliver. It’s about time you accepted some accountability for this and, instead of rehearsing the arguments of yesterday, start mapping out a vision for tomorrow and the success that we all want to see in our education system here in Wales.

There is, I believe, a vacancy as Donald Trump’s press secretary for the leader of the Welsh Conservatives by his presentation of alternative facts. It is a fact indisputable that GCSE results have improved over the last three years; it is a fact indisputable that A-level results are improving; it is a fact indisputable that his party wanted to cut education spending by 12 per cent. They boasted about it. They produced a mini manifesto that included that figure in the mini manifesto—or is that an ‘alternative fact’? The reality is that if his party had come anywhere near education in Wales, they would have destroyed the education system through cuts, they wouldn’t have built schools, they would have kept children being taught in schools that were falling apart. We have never done that. Education is moving in the right direction, with improvements across the board, and that’s exactly where we will take education in the future, not backwards to the days when education was underfunded by the Conservative Party in London—a party that truly does not care about education for all and does not care about the opportunities that are available for youngsters in Wales. That’s what we stand for. They will never understand what it means to get a good education and good opportunities, because they’ve never had to fight for it themselves.