Thank you very much for your statement this afternoon, Cabinet Secretary, and there’s much to commend, or to be commended in the report from the Welsh Ambulance Services Trust. And, like you, I would like to particularly commend the paramedics who have made enormous strides forward in delivering and being able to deliver timely care, and I think that they are making a real different to patient outcomes, and I have absolutely no quarrels with the assertions you make along those lines.

I do have three key areas of questioning I would like to go through with you. The first is about increasing resources to the ambulance service. There’s been an awful lot of discussion by the staff within the report, in the report itself, and in the discussions that you facilitated, most kindly, with the Welsh ambulance service only a couple of weeks ago about not having enough clinicians, either in a hub or within their particular specialities in a hospital, that will enable patients who have been brought by paramedics to the right door of the hospital to be processed more quickly and thoroughly, and that there’s been some real concerns by the staff that they feel that there’s a blockage there—. And I’d like to have your view on what you think we can do to improve, or you will be doing to improve, and adding to the resources in the ambulance service, so that having had these amazing paramedics get them to that door, they’re through that door and in the right place, at the right time, and being treated well. Staff have also raised concerns that they need more training, and I wonder how much of the recent funding package for medical staff training will you be allocating to this particular staff group in order to enhance and give added depth to the ambulance service.

The second area I’d like to ask you about is the amber calls and waiting times. The report has highlighted that there’s concern that the amber category group is way too large, and is not sufficiently discriminatory. The staff themselves talk about this as a real issue, because, of course, there are only a few calls now that are being put into the red category. And I’d just like to read one quick excerpt from a member of staff, who says:

‘Amber response targets not being met due to demand and resourcing’.

And

‘I feel as there are so many calls in this category, the triage queue doesn't work well. For example, an unconscious stroke patient categorised below a person who is drunk and not alert.’

And I’d be really interested in hearing your take on the very valid staff concerns that they’re raising about amber calls and waiting times.

The previous model called for almost 50 per cent of calls to be categorised as life threatening, and we all recognise that that was counter-productive, given the true proportion of life-threatening calls is nearer to 10 per cent. So why is it, Cabinet Secretary, that only 5 per cent of life-threatening calls are being held against targets in Wales, and will you intend to review that, as you move forward?

There’s also real concern that the data on patient outcomes are very poor, and I wonder what can be done to improve this. When we had our meeting with the WAST officials, and we talked about why stroke patients, for example, are not in red category—which is something we, the Welsh Conservatives, absolutely believe in—the officials were talking about the fact that they were getting them to the door in time, and what we needed to do was talk to the health boards, to be reassured that, going further, those stroke patients, at the door, would be moved through to the appropriate place for their correct treatment, whether they needed a CT scan, or some kind of thrombolytic treatment. And yet, when I FOI’d all the health boards, none of them—none of them—were able to come back with the information that says that stroke patients are being moved through appropriately.

So, we still have an issue where we have an illness that requires a certain amount of treatment within a certain amount of time, and, although the health board, because of the way you’ve now run this system—although the ambulance service no longer has to get to that patient, and get them to the front door within a very short period of time, the worry we have is that too much of the amount of time is being used up by the ambulance service before they go and get to that patient, or getting the patient to the door, because there is absolutely no guarantee yet that the patient, once they get to the door of the hospital, is getting to the appropriate treatment within that hospital. In the old days, if you had to get them there by eight minutes, or 10 minutes, or whatever it was, you knew then you had a couple of hours to play with if there were problems within the hospital in terms of resources. We’ve now flipped that over on its head. And this is not me saying it, it’s actually the report highlighting it, and it’s the staff concerns about what is happening to these stroke patients.

And, as I say, I would reiterate this, Cabinet Secretary: when I did an FOI on every single health board, none of them were able to tell me, with any degree of data, that they had stroke patients entering their door, and getting to the treatment, still within the golden hours that those patients need. And I find that very concerning, and I’d really like to have a good, clear answer as to why people with strokes and hearts are not in the red category. There are a number of other questions, but I appreciate that I’m probably taking too much time.