I’m delighted to be able to speak to this statement and like you, Cabinet Secretary, I would like to add my thanks to Dr Ruth Hussey and to the members of the panel for their work on this. I’ve appreciated very much the open and transparent way in which the chair and the panel have engaged with me and, I know, with other Assembly Member colleagues and with the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee.

I think that this is a seminal moment for Welsh Government—for every politician, actually—for the NHS and for the care sector, and I think that the report that they have produced—the interim report—is very, very clear and lays out not just the scale of the challenge that we face, but some of the possible routes with which we might go down to solve some of those challenges. I think that there's not much in this report that none of us knew about, but sometimes you have to ask somebody on the outside to tell you the obvious, because you know it, but you've got to hear it again. I think they very carefully stated again a lot of the problems, a lot of the issues, a lot of the challenges that we all know so well. But they've done it in a very cool and dispassionate way and they’ve laid it out very clearly. So, it's the sounding board that we needed and we've had that.

I think that the report is very clear, again, on a number of things. One is that the pace of change must accelerate—that doing nothing is not an option we can afford to take, nor should we take. I was very struck by how very clearly they lay out that there are a lot of green shoots already showing within the NHS landscape—great models of innovation out there, but that somehow there is a barrier to those innovative models taking root and flourishing and being able to be transplanted to other areas and being able to gain credence throughout the whole of the NHS. So, for me, this report very clearly identified that we all know the direction of travel, but that the road map isn't clear for an awful lot of organisations with which we need to work. So, as ever, the question is: what are those barriers to improvement? I look forward to the second stage of the report. I met with Ruth Hussey this morning and she was very clear that in the second stage of the report that they want to bring out some of that detail.

Having said that, though, I think that there are some clear lessons we can start learning from now. So, Cabinet Secretary, I'd like to ask you just a few of those questions, because there's so much you could speak about on this report—it's very hard to actually discern the best bits to talk about in the time given. I think the report shows that Welsh Government has struggled to drive some good policies through. So, my first question to you is: how will you skill up your department and your officials, so they are better able to lead and persuade for change? My second question is, given the first: how will you see managing the tensions created by these decisions for Wales that the report talks about, and I can totally buy into that need? And what type of decisions do you foresee that they might be—macro, minor—and what kind of scale? And given those tensions from the first and second question: how will you engage, and take with you, local communities? Because I do note in your statement the one thing you do not mention is public engagement at any great level, and that is something that this report is really, really, really strong on, and I'm concerned that you don't mention it in your statement. I would like your assurance that public engagement and the voice of the patient, the user, and those who have yet to use the NHS will be heard in all of this.

The report identifies areas that already need work and I don't think we need to wait for a second report for the conclusion to know that we need to look at how we bring co-production into health and social care; how we transform and transfer information. I wonder if you can outline what steps you think you might be able to take already; how you might be able to support the highly fragile care sector; how you might be able to support—and I love this word—the care force: the people who give the voluntary care to all of those families at home and all of those loved ones, and what can we do now to support them? I’d be very interested to know what we might be able to do now to look at the training needs and the pay and conditions of our care force, the paid care sector, because I think that they are being left behind in the race towards trying to improve our NHS at the moment.

I was delighted to see that this report talked a lot about housing and about how our homes are going to become the place where we will receive health and social care in the future. I would like to understand, Cabinet Secretary, if you have plans to talk to your colleagues about how we can start to address some of their housing needs. For example, I know in my own constituency that of all of the houses being built, whether they’re being built privately, by the county council or by housing associations, it’s a tiny percentage that are being built to house people with disabilities, or house people with dementia, the elderly, to put in stairlifts—whatever it might take—and yet it seems to me, having read this report, we must ensure that more of our public and private housing stock is able to take care of us. I think the report is very clear about how many people are going to be able to need more and more support in their homes.

I have picked up your very, very gracious comment or nod there, Deputy Presiding Officer; I shall gabble through the last little bit, and, actually, just to ask one more thing. The leader of the opposition asked the First Minister today whether or not this would be the direction of travel. Now, I think that this is a really great cornerstone to start building a future for our NHS. I think the workforce of the NHS, I think the politicians and I think the patients are all exhausted by where we’re at, and that we need to have a clearer, brighter future. And I would like to really understand where your commitment is to taking forward this report. I’m sure that over the years we will argue about the delivery of some of it, and about whether one thing should be a priority or another. But the skeleton that has been drawn up here I think is very, very strong, and I would like to know and be reassured by you—because I don’t think we got that right answer from the First Minister—that this actually is going to be taken and used and not just left on a shelf to gather dust, as so many other reports have been in the past.