To be fair, the follow-up question that you asked the First Minister wasn’t specifically about hip waiting times, so you got a response about general orthopaedic action. There is a challenge here about hips within the orthopaedic waiting times that the health board are experiencing. On the Ysbyty Glan Clwyd site, it’s where they see the most complex patients, and, actually, they are the long-waiters—they are more likely to be long-waiters. Unfortunately, there isn’t the capacity available to deal with all of those people at present. There’s a medium-term plan that’s being constructed by the health board, together with their clinicians, to actually tackle that, because we recognise that they do need to do that.

Overall waiting times are much more reasonable. The challenge is this particular group and other particular groups of longer-term waiters. Part of the challenge for the health board is the capacity that they do have and the capacity that they’ve previously been able to make use of within the English system, of which there is less, but it’s also, actually, about the fact that there has been a significant increase in demand in the health board area. In fact, the number of people who have been referred for orthopaedic treatment in secondary care has gone up over 83 per cent in the last four years. Actually, the number of people seen and treated within time has gone up by a third in that time.

So, you see that there’s a mismatch in the ability to see and treat more people, which the health board has done, and to actually meet the demand itself. That’s why actually delivering against the planned care programme is really important—those measures have to go forward. It’s why the support that we provide to the health board matters. It’s not just money, but some of the expertise and the scrutiny of their plans. Of course, I expect to see further improvement over this year and the next year as well. It will be part of the scrutiny and accountability exercise that takes place—whether this health board or any other is in special measures—because, as I’ve said before, I recognise that these long waiting times are not acceptable, and it’s a challenge for this part of the health service and every other.