Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I would like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for bringing forward this debate today, and I’m delighted to take part. I’m firmly of the opinion that social prescribing, particularly when it comes to mental health, can deliver real health benefits for Welsh patients, and UKIP will, therefore, be supporting the motion.

As results from studies in Bristol and Rotherham have shown, social prescribing schemes can lead to a reduction in the use of NHS services, but, more importantly, lead to improvements in mental health and general well-being, improvements to quality of life and reduced levels of depression and anxiety.

It’s the last point that I find the most encouraging. Rather than condemning patients will mental ill health to a life on antidepressants, which have been shown to have terrible side effects, social prescribing can be used to better effect.

Social prescribing can also deliver cost savings to our NHS. Preliminary economic analysis of the Rotherham study found that the scheme could pay for itself within two years due to reducing reliance on NHS services. My only concern is that, for this to be truly effective, we need to pump significant investment into primary care. To be able to effectively deliver social prescribing, GPs need to be effectively resourced, giving them the time to be able to consider the whole person more consistently, and they need access to fully resourced community services to which to refer patients when appropriate. According to the Royal College of General Practitioners, the promotion of social prescribing ultimately needs to be managed carefully as it generates expectations of general practice to carry out non-health functions, which it has limited capacity to do. They also state that social prescribing schemes can certainly be beneficial to a patient’s overall health and well-being, as some pilots have shown. To be effective, there needs to be better integration between health and community services, so that GPs and our teams can signpost our patients most appropriately.

As I’ve highlighted many times, our NHS is most effective when we have a true partnership between the public, private and third sectors. Social prescribing is such a partnership approach. If we consider and mitigate the additional burden that social prescribing places upon our GPs, I do firmly believe that it has the potential to deliver enormous benefit to Welsh patients. I therefore look forward to seeing further details of the social prescribing trials and hope the Cabinet Secretary can assure us that resulting social prescribing schemes will be properly resourced and not place additional burdens upon our already over-stretched GPs.

It is clear that the traditional approach to mental health care is not working, particularly for our younger population who are facing new and varied challenges to their mental health. We need new ways of working, as the taking of a pill method appears to do more harm than good. So, social prescribing has a role to play in meeting this challenge and I look forward to working with the Welsh Government to deliver a Wales-wide approach that benefits patients and our GPs alike. Thank you.