On Professor Purt, we were completely clear about the secondment arrangement for him to leave the health service in Wales. He is now no longer part of the service. We are absolutely transparent about the arrangement for him to leave, including the financial measures that took place with that.

In terms of your comment that members of Betsi Cadwaladr health board have not been paid a single penny, I assume that you don’t mean the members of staff who work for Betsi Cadwaladr, but that you’re talking about the independent members who are appointed. Well, they are still undertaking a role—they’re still acting—and if I took the decision that they should not be paid, I should actually just simply remove them rather than simply saying, ‘I’m going to punish you by effectively taking a disciplinary measure to remove the moneys that you’re entitled to in undertaking this public appointment’. I think it’s really important that, in properly holding people to account, we don’t look for easy or headline-grabbing measures to try and say, ‘This is what we should or must do’.

For me, the most important thing is that the health board improves. You do need members there who are committed to providing the scrutiny that wasn’t undertaken to the level that we’d want it to in the past. We’ve seen a review of people; we’ve seen actually a renewal of people as independent members on that health board. We’ve seen new executive members come in, so there are new leadership arrangements in place within the health board: a new executive nurse director, a new medical director and a new chief executive officer as well. So, it’s really important to understand that the leadership has moved on from the time when the organisation went into special measures. For me, it must always be: are we seeing progress being made? Are we getting the independent reassurance from regulators that real progress is being made, and what are the continuing channels that we need to see resolved within Betsi Cadwladr? Because that, for me, is the most important thing, because I want people living in north Wales to have the same high-quality health service that I believe that every citizen in any part of Wales in entitled to.