Thank you, Chair. I’m grateful to Plaid Cymru for tabling this debate today. As a Government, our amendment makes clear: since devolution, we’ve seen a significant increase in the numbers in our medical workforce, but this Government is far from complacent. Despite the successes that we highlight, we recognise there are still challenges for some medical specialities and some geographical areas of Wales, just as there are across the rest of the UK. That’s why we committed, in our programme for Government, to continue to take action to attract and train more GPs, nurses, and other health professionals to Wales. To deliver that commitment, we launched our campaign to encourage doctors, including GPs, to come to Wales to train, work and live. We have seen a significant early impact with GP trainee fill rates at the end of round 1 at 84 per cent, compared to 68 per cent at the same point last year. That includes a 100 per cent fill rate in Pembrokeshire, north-east Wales, and north-west Wales GP training schemes.

Members will be aware, of course, that I launched the second phase of Train, Work, Live for nurses last week. The initial impact in terms of social media activity has been very encouraging, with our promotional video being viewed 30,000 times, and our content reaching over 110,000 people.

Now, I know the motion calls for a medical school in Bangor, and Sian Gwenllian has been very consistent in her calls on this issue. As the First Minister made clear in this Chamber, in the coming weeks I will make a statement—as I indicated I always would do—on the conclusion of the work that I commissioned to consider the provision of medical education and training in north Wales, including the case for a new medical school. I’m not about to try and sign myself up to a commitment one way or another before that work concludes—that’s a simple explanation for the Government amendment in not making reference to the medical school. It’s part of a case that I’ve committed to deliver on, committed to respond and return to Members on, and I will do so.

But regardless of the outcome of this work, we know that we need to be flexible and explore all options in terms of education and training in north Wales. Cross-border working already exists in places such as speciality training for paediatrics, and sub-speciality training posts established for higher anaesthesia. So, despite the unremittingly negative contribution by Mark Isherwood, I’m happy to confirm that the Government will support the amendment in the name of Paul Davies.

I want to deal with the recasting of the 1,000 doctors—1,000 doctors over 10 years in terms of what’s additional, or in terms of what we currently train now. We already train—over 10 years, we’ll have trained that number of doctors. But the training of doctors is part of a long-term future for the health service—the amount of time, we understand, it takes to train doctors, so recruiting and retaining our current workforce is a big part of where we need to be, including those training rates, as I mentioned earlier. There is a long-term approach to all of this, and that must take in the models of work that we expect people to come to, and it also takes in how we’ll actually provide that training as well.

If we want, as Lee Waters indicated, to have that broader point of the differing model of general practice, where general practitioners work as part of a wider team, we need to train people to work in that way as well, because the way that general practice works now is very different to 10 and 20 years ago, and in the next 10 and 20 years, it will be different again. There is always a constant need to adapt—we’re having to understand what numbers of different medical professionals we need to provide the sort of service that people, quite rightly, expect. So, that’s why we continue to invest in the education and training of the wider healthcare workforce—that we already do within north Wales and at Bangor University. So, courses are commissioned in nursing, midwifery, radiography and pilot courses for physician associates, as well as the courses offered at Bangor’s clinical school. Now, physician associates are a good example of the development of the wider workforce within healthcare. They’re still in pilot phase, but we think they’re part of the future, so understanding what Swansea and Bangor provide in terms of that new cohort of physician associates is important to us, as well as the measures that we take to make sure that they’re part of our healthcare system in Wales, with a real career path in models of care that will make a difference.