Let me just develop my point a little. Policies they suggested just six years ago of proper dress in the theatre, repainting the trains in traditional colours, more swearing allegiance to the Queen, cheaper beer and bringing back imperial measures. This is the 1950s, where, of course, the family doctor was the lynchpin of the primary care model. Reading UKIP’s motion today, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they want to recreate this approach to primary healthcare today.

But, of course, times have changed. Demand has increased—as Caroline Jones noted in her own opening remarks, the pressure on GPs now is considerable. GPs are seeing more than 50,000 patients a day. This has a knock-on effect on the whole health system. I was in Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli recently, and they explained to me that the average age of a patient there now is 82 years of age. So, the whole system is under immense demand, and, of course, it has to change to meet those demands.

One of the challenges that modern healthcare faces is being able to develop a new system while also running the old system in parallel. So, there will be strains and struggles from time to time, but the new model is gradually emerging. The advantage of the new model is that it respects and elevates the skill and training of a GP, and frees them up to look at the more complex cases, while some of the other things that traditionally a GP might have done, or indeed services that simply weren’t in existence back in the 1950s, are done by a range of allied health professionals.

So, for example, we have now in many modern primary healthcare settings paramedic practitioners, prescribing pharmacists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists, all offering tailored support to people at the time that they need it, when often the GP is not able to do so. For example, I mentioned earlier that I welcomed the Cabinet Secretary to the Kidwelly surgery of Minafon recently, where we saw a prescribing pharmacist working part-time in the surgery, who’s been able to do a review of all patients with asthma in the practice, to review their medication and to provide them with advice, which is something a GP-led model only would not have been able to do— they just simply wouldn’t have had the time. And also, we need to pay heed to the principles of prudent healthcare—that you only do what only you can do. And I think that this new model plays perfectly into that philosophy.

Of course, there are challenges in being able to replicate this model. As we heard the health Secretary say earlier, there are only 15 managed practices currently in Wales, and obviously when you are managed by the health board, you have greater freedom and flexibility to be able to innovate, and to be able to start from scratch and reassemble a model fit for purpose. The system is going under organic change. I have spoken to GPs in Llanelli recently, who are having recruitment problems—they’re having doctors going off on maternity leave, they’re having huge problems recruiting, and locums, for example, are now demanding £1,500 a day in some cases in order to meet the needs of a practice, and they’re telling the practice what they will do, what hours they will work, what things they will do for that money, and holding them to ransom. So, there are huge strains that GP services have, and the GMS contract model is under huge strain and does need to change. And that’s why I think the UKIP motion is misguided, because it is basing its premise on a model that is slowly crumbling away.

We’ve heard mention from Angela Burns about the cluster model, which she said is patchy, and I think that one of the challenges the cluster model has is to try and encourage those GPs operating within the current contractor model—and something that people from outside the NHS often forget is that this is, in a sense, a private business still for many—these GP clusters need to encourage these practices to come together, to merge, and only in some parts of Wales is there support available for those GP services to do it—support for IT contracts, for finance, and so on. I think Aneurin Bevan and the ABMU currently provide a service to do that. And many GP practices, because of the sheer volume, simply don’t have the space to be more strategic. And that’s back to the point I was making earlier—we have the challenge of developing a new model of health care, while also running the existing model of health care, which is under huge strain.

So, I think it is time that UKIP left the 1950s, joined us in the modern world, and accepted that the GPs—[Interruption.] Sadly, David, I’m out of time.