We do face a crisis in Wales in terms of the number of doctors. That’s very clear, and the crisis does exist in the wake of the failure of the Government to plan the workforce and to train new doctors, as well as recruiting from other countries.

Plaid Cymru is a party that is striving to offer solutions to the problems that we face here in Wales, and this crisis is at its worst in north Wales. In May 2017, 141 jobs in Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board were vacant, which represents 37 per cent of all the vacant posts in NHS Wales. Therefore, the solution is obvious: establishing a new medical school in north Wales in order to train a new generation of doctors for the benefit of the sustainability of the health service in the long term. But, unfortunately, the Labour Party is still stubbornly rejecting this idea, despite all the evidence and the opinions of experts, as we’ve outlined in our report, ‘Tackling the Crisis’.

There’s been talk about the cost, and I’ve dealt with the cost previously in this Chamber, so I’m not going to expand on that but just remind you of this: over the last three years, Betsi Cadwaladr spent more than £80 million on locum doctors. Then, last week, the First Minister said this, in this place,

We know it would be difficult’—

That is, difficult to set up a medical centre in Bangor— because big medical schools are in big cities with big hospitals, which have a far greater spread of specialities.’

More excuses. The problem is that the Government is missing the point entirely here, because the three hospitals across north Wales would train students on work placements, and they would receive training in the community as well. The University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff has only 800 beds, but the university has 1,500 medical students. The university uses other hospitals across the region, just as a medical school in Bangor would use all the facilities available across north Wales. Ireland has seven medical schools, and there are five in Scotland, which suggests that one medical school per 1 million of the population is practical. A third medical school in Wales would correspond to the structures in Ireland and Scotland. Betsi Cadwaladr health board has the largest population of all of Wales’s health boards, with almost 700,000 people. Add the population of other rural counties of Wales, and you will reach a figure of 1 million people.

The First Minister has also claimed that a lack of diversity and expertise in north Wales exists. Apart from extremely specialist work, like cardiothoracic and neurosurgery, then we have everything else required in north Wales, and it would be easy to actually teach those two areas of expertise with some vision. Labour’s support—or the lack of Labour’s support—is starting to become a joke, and the excuses are very poor indeed. Many universities in England and across the world have small hospitals nearby, for example, Lancaster and Keele. In a small town called Salina, some three hours from Kansas City in the United States, there is a medical school that has been established with the intention of ensuring that the graduates serve in rural areas once they’ve graduated. The reality of the situation is that none of the Government’s claims stack up. With ambition and strong leadership, this Government could tackle the crisis in north Wales—the crisis that exists because of a shortage of doctors and medical staff. The Government has to be willing to be innovative, to listen to evidence and to put parochialism aside.