Indeed. There is more for us to do about making sure we have a fully joined-up system. And there’s something about having a platform to allow the sharing of the record, and then having what are currently independent businesses having their own platforms that can actually talk consistently with them. As we continue to develop our digital platform within the health service, we do need to make sure that we have things that are consistent between the different parts of our system. It’s not an easy challenge, but it’s something that we expect as part of what we want to achieve. And, equally, I know, Lee, you’ve made points before about catching up with public expectation, because most members of the public already expect pharmacy and their local GP practice to be able to talk to each other on a digital platform. They expect the hospital system and their local healthcare system to be joined up as well. So, we’ve got a lot to do to catch up. And I recognise the point. In fact, I met pharmacists from Burry Port in a recent day with the health board, and with the university, about what they’d already managed to do and the further innovation they wanted to see take place as well. And, actually, seeing that innovation take place, and it being successful, is part of what gives me real encouragement about the future. Things are happening, and I’d rather have the challenge of, ‘How do we make that more successful across the country?’ rather than, ‘We have no ideas and we don’t know what to do.’

There are, of course, opportunities for community pharmacists to train as independent prescribers, as Russell George asked, and I’m happy to see that supported more generally, in addition to seeing a greater contribution to be made by community pharmacists, and thinking about how we do that with the staff, with the people, with the workforce and, of course, the platform to allow them to do so as effectively as possible.

The common ailment service, which is now being rolled out on the Choose Pharmacy platform, is important in itself. It takes pressure off GPs, gives the citizen more options, and that should then mean that we have other things that we can do, including chronic conditions management and others as well. So, I see it as a start of having a trusted platform to roll out, and then there is more that we could and should do, and I’ve made those comments previously in this Chamber and beyond.

I want to go back to your point about continuing to invest in community pharmacy. And I’m really pleased and proud of what we’ve been able to do in Wales. Everyone knows we face difficult choices, and I won’t make party political points about the Welsh Conservatives at least, but there are difficult choices to make. We know there is less public money available. The Welsh Government has a smaller budget in real terms, and we don’t really expect that to change in the budget round that we’re expecting in November. So, the choices we make are even more important. And I made a deliberate choice to continue to invest £144 million every year in community pharmacy. Across our border, in England, there have been cuts of 7 per cent made to the community pharmacy team. Now, that’s a difference in choice. That’s part of devolution being different, but part of the reason that I chose to do that was that I think there’s more that we can get from the community pharmacy network. And I want to see the network sustained, and to see that used in a different way. And if it can’t maintain the investment in the service, we may well see some pharmacies not existing anymore, not because there’s a quality argument, not because there’s a useful agglomeration of pharmacies locally providing a better and more robust service, but simply because the money wouldn’t be there for that to take place.

And that’s why the roll-out of the platform matters, but also there’s something for something in this as well. Having made a deliberate choice not to cut that investment in the community pharmacy system here in Wales, there’s an expectation that we’re seeing more quality in what’s delivered, and not a payment by volume, by prescribing and by dispensing, but actually a payment in the ability to deliver more quality in the care that the community pharmacists actually provide. And that should make it a more interesting place for them to work. It’s, in some ways, not dissimilar to the conversation with high-street optometrists who want to be able to do different things. And the way we’ve rolled out services into high-street optometrists made the job more interesting for those people, and it’s a better use of our resource across the system—better for GPs not to have people turn up with eye care problems when they’re probably not the right person to see, a better job for the optometrists to do themselves, and actually, for the citizen, more rapid access to the right healthcare professional within their local community. And that’s more of what I expect to see within our system right across the country.

That’s also why, from this month, I’ve also made available £1.5 million specifically to go into that pharmacy quality programme, and that will support collaborative work between pharmacies and other local healthcare providers to make sure that the advantages that we currently have are made real. So, that’s the direction that this Government is setting and that’s the environment that we want local healthcare to be provided in. I think Llanidloes is a good example of what we could and should see more of in the future, and more that we can learn about what to get right and, equally, things that won’t go right and mistakes that we shouldn’t repeat in other parts of our system.

So, there’s much that we can be proud of and much that I’m proud of within our system here as well. And I look forward to working alongside community pharmacy and other healthcare professionals to deliver the very best possible healthcare, even within the current constraints that we all know we operate within.