Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am pleased to open this debate on social care, carers and community hospitals. We often discuss, as we should do in this Chamber, the health service—the NHS—but it is extremely important that we always bear in mind that, behind the NHS, there is an ecosystem of support of social care, third sector groups and unpaid carers—all of them contributing to what is needed by people the length and breadth of Wales. We’ve often referred to the mistaken policy of the Conservative Government in London of safeguarding the NHS budget at the expense of local authority budgets, including social care. I’m not going to spend too much time on that issue. I do think, however, that it is fair to say that the Welsh Conservatives have a different view to their fellow Conservatives in Westminster. I think that the Member for Carmarthen west deserves praise for that. I don’t think that we could have said the same a year ago.

The Welsh Government often reminds us about the fact—and it is a fact—that expenditure on social care here hasn’t been cut to the same extent here as it has in England. It is true: if you compare with the financial year 2011-12, expenditure on social services for adults is around £100 million more in cash terms in the most recent year, and this also translates into a real terms increase, too. So, we should be seeing improvements, and I want you to bear that in mind during this debate. But I am more interested, as I hope others are, in outputs rather than budgets. So, I have been looking at the trends over this period of time in order to have an overview of how social care is performing, whilst acknowledging that the pressures are increasing because of an ageing population.

There was an increase in the number of hours of homecare provided until 2014-15, but there has been a reduction in the past year. That is something that we should be concerned about, and we should certainly be keeping an eye on in terms of the trend. It’s also worth noting that the hours of care provided directly by local authorities have decreased, whilst the hours of care provided by independent contractors on behalf of local authorities have increased. There are excellent companies providing care, of course, but we do need to be guarded in safeguarding staff and service users in a climate where zero-hours contracts and low wages are commonplace.

I will move to adaptation and personal equipment. Here, we see a reduction of 21 per cent in home adaptations, and a reduction of 15 per cent in equipment. What the Minister said in response to a question from me last week was that we need to bear in mind that everyone’s needs are different, and that we shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions, but seeing a reduction of 21 per cent at a time when the population is ageing and demands on the service are increasing is quite surprising to me, certainly.

I will now turn to delayed transfers of care, which is a very important measure of the way in which the NHS and social care interact and collaborate. The Government has highlighted this performance as an example of success, and if we look at the annual numbers of cases of delayed transfers of care for reasons of social care, then there has been excellent attainment. One has to say that in that period between 2000 and 2013, when we saw a reduction from some 5,000 cases a year down to 1,200 a year, there’s no question that that was a significant improvement, but since 2013, the figures have been creeping up slowly. Last year, there were 1,343 cases of delayed transfers of care for social care reasons, and therefore, I would warn Government—and I hope that they don’t do this—that they shouldn’t become complacent. Things at present are moving in the wrong direction, with more than 100 cases of delayed transfers of care every month, because of issues related to social care. This is a problem for the NHS, of course, but it is also something that causes anguish to patients who find themselves caught in these kinds of situations.