I’m pleased to take part in this debate on the NHS in Wales, and pleased also to celebrate the achievements of the NHS in Wales. This is, obviously, from the vantage point of having been a doctor in Wales since 1980. Working in the NHS has been exhilarating, challenging, and fulfilling—sometimes all at once—despite all the governmental and managerial upheavals and reorganisations that have been hurled into my path down the years. It’s a tremendous bond with people. I have grown up with people in Swansea. Patients who were children when I started are now grandparents. It’s been a privilege to have been a constant thread in the lives of so many people. It’s a strength of trust and respect—mutual—as people recognise the tremendous commitment and skill of the staff of the NHS.

Now, the NHS is not without its faults, of course. That very human resource can also err, and there is never enough money for the latest technologies and drugs. But here in Wales we have an NHS—yes, under strain every day, yet still remarkably a public service in public hands that engenders phenomenal levels of loyalty and respect from the patients of Wales. And because it’s not private, no money changes hands during the consultation. People know that the advice I give them is what I would give my own family, untainted by finance skewing the management. With free prescriptions, I can recommend long-term preventative medication, life-saving tablets like statins and high blood pressure tablets and asthma inhalers, safe in the knowledge that people will take them, and not be swayed by having to pay over £8 per item for them, as in England.

I am proud of the innovations in health here in Wales. Our two excellent medical schools are at the forefront of world-class research and treatments, involving patients from both inside Wales and beyond. Exciting immunotherapy for mesothelioma, as we heard in the cross-party group on asbestos last night: immunotherapy for mesothelioma in Cardiff, and patients coming from all over. Cutting-edge surgery in Cardiff, and, in Swansea, Morriston’s advanced burns and plastic unit—that covers the south-west of England as well as the whole of south Wales. That burns and plastic unit is truly phenomenal. Similar high praise comes in the way of cardiac surgery in Wales, too. Lives are being saved that would not have been saved a generation ago, and I am proud to be associated with all of that. And organ donation: the new opt-out system, pioneered here in Wales, is transforming the renal transplant scene in the United Kingdom. This Assembly should be justifiably proud of its role in bringing this about, providing inspiration throughout these islands, and additional organs for transplantation across these islands and across Europe.

Ours is a collaborative, human NHS, and any dependency works both ways, as I’ve already indicated. Yes, there are specialised units in Liverpool and Manchester serving the people of north Wales, but they are dependent on the 600,000 north Walians to make their specialised units viable, in critical mass terms. Without those 600,000 people in north Wales, those units in Liverpool and Manchester also are not viable. The dependency bit works both ways and all along Offa’s Dyke around 15,000 people in England are registered with GPs in Wales, and around 13,000 people in Wales are registered with GPs in England, to be fair. But mature human consideration and altruism mean that the care carries on regardless of geography. But we live in uncertain times. Brexit has imperilled our NHS and care staff. Voting for a hard Brexit brings other Tory ways of dealing with public services too, like insidious privatisation of the health service as in England. Commissioning groups there have to commission from outside the NHS. They have to privatise; they have no choice. Division and competition are rife; non-regulation and secrecy supreme; and a Tory health secretary in England who has provoked junior doctors strikes for the first time in over 40 years. Wales—different. No, defend Wales and defend our NHS. Diolch yn fawr.