Diolch yn fawr, Gadeirydd. There’s no doubt that huge progress has been made with the intervention of the Welsh Government over the last year, with a 12 per cent increase in the number of GPs in Wales since the Assembly was established, and in just the last year, the number of GP training places being filled is at 84 per cent, whereas it was at 60 per cent a year ago. So, the intervention of the Welsh Government to offer incentives and pay exam fees for GPs is showing encouraging signs of progress, but clearly the workforce is changing, and we need to recognise that there is no simple solution to the need to recruit and train more GPs. It’s clear that the younger workforce want to work part time and flexibly, and no longer are attracted in the way that they were into rural areas and away from the cities. We need to recognise that, so we need to change, I think, the model that we have in primary care, and this requires a mature conversation.

I had a meeting last night in Burry Port where over 250 people attended—organised by myself and Nia Griffith, who’s been the MP for Llanelli—and there was huge public concern, exacerbated by the fact that the local health board are refusing to engage people in a conversation early enough when services need to change. In Burry Port, at the Harbour View practice, a single GP practice—one of the last remaining single GP practices in Hywel Dda—the GP there, Dr Lodha, has decided to retire. She notified the health board of this in February, and it’s only now that patients are being told—some being notified only by a scrappy bit of paper on the door of the surgery—that the surgery is to close. They fear being dispersed to ‘nearby’ GPs in Trimsaran, Kidwelly and Pontyates, where there is no easy public transport available and the existing GPs have closed lists. So, there’s understandable anxiety in the town and the health board have refused to engage with the public on this. I think here we have a problem, because we saw in the Minafon practice in Kidwelly, which I was pleased to invite the health Secretary along to earlier in the year—that when they did engage with the community, they were able to bring them along in finding more creative solutions to a different model of general practice that, now it’s beginning to bed in, patients are recognising offers advantages. Instead of relying simply on GPs, having pharmacists and nurse practitioners and physiotherapists on hand can offer a better service.

But, clearly, change causes anxieties, and that’s why it’s important to involve the public in the conversation from the get-go. But Hywel Dda, this time, as before, held a private process where a panel led by their deputy chair analysed data of changing populations and so on and decided, in their best judgment, that the surgery should close without any alternatives being publicly explored. Surely this is a mistake, because, as part of that initial checklist process they go through, there must be patient engagement. When you can treat patients like adults and show them what the options are and bring them along in that choice, you can end up with a better solution.

They’ve failed to do that in this case. They’ve failed to engage with me as the elected Assembly Member and with the other elected representatives in the area and, as a result, we now have great local concern. I’m hoping that they will rethink that and will properly engage with the community, because they rightly feel that they deserve a proper service, when the town of Burry Port is growing and when the needs of the population are changing. So, I would urge the Government to consider how, when these changes occur all across Wales, the need to engage with communities is hardwired in at the beginning of that process, so we don’t have the farce of a situation where the first patients hear of a change to their service is a scrappy bit of paper on a door.