Diolch, Lywydd. They sought to shamelessly use the ambulance service as a political football and, as you indicated, Cabinet Secretary, continued to criticise when the clinical model pilot was actually proposed by Welsh Government. Working closely with those ambulance professionals, who were daily having to bat away largely unfounded criticisms, I could see that this was denting their confidence and making their attempts to run an effective emergency service even more difficult. The thanks to these staff, which always followed those criticisms, I have to tell you, clearly just did not wash—they did not wash.

During that time, front-line ambulance staff were telling me what was needed. What they said they needed was to get away from the random A8 target, which meant that every ambulance, regardless of the nature of the call, had to reach its destination within eight minutes. This was against all clinical evidence, which showed that only the most serious of cardiac cases actually benefited from this target. The target itself was actually acting against getting speedy responses to those most in need. This position was never accepted by the opposition here in the Assembly, despite apparent recognition now from the Conservative spokesperson today that the previous model was actually counterproductive.

The McClelland review, which was commissioned in light of the constant criticisms of the ambulance service, took evidence from a number of stakeholders, with Unison, representing the front-line ambulance staff, being one of them. Unison’s evidence was based solely on the experience of those professional, highly skilled, well-qualified, clinical, front-line staff, who stated that a change to the clinically led suite of evidence based performance indicators was needed rather than continued reliance on the eight-minute response times, which actually were totally meaningless in terms of measuring outcomes.

It would be fair to say, Cabinet Secretary, that the views of these front-line staff, as submitted by Unison, were in the minority of the evidence that was submitted to the review. However, I am pleased that the Welsh Government attached sufficient importance to the views of the front-line professionals and clinical experts, rather than its political opponents—