I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate this afternoon. Although obviously not from the north, through my role as leader of the Welsh Conservatives here, I obviously spend quite a considerable time going up to north Wales and seeking first-hand experience of the plight, as I'd put it, that many people feel they're in about the service that they're getting from the health board, which has now been in special measures for some 30 months. It's worth noting that, obviously, in England, for example, the average special measures stay for a similar health body would be about 21 months.

I don't detract from the fact that there are tensions and issues across the whole of the United Kingdom when it comes to health services. In particular, there is something to be celebrated in that more people are being treated in our health service across the United Kingdom. That's because, obviously, there are far more people on these islands and we're living longer as well, and so health services across the United Kingdom have a real dilemma on their hands of rising demand and an inability to attract the staff that they require to man the wards and man the primary practices.

And there's no more significant case to highlight than that in north Wales, which, for many years—virtually I think for the entire time that I've been an Assembly Member—has struggled with recruitment and retention in particular. We do focus a lot on the recruitment of new staff into the health service, but, actually, retention is a critical part of what we need to be doing in the health service, and no more so than in north Wales. It is regrettable that, if you look at the stats on staff sickness within the health board, they are some of the highest within the health service in Wales, and stress in particular is identified as being one of the most common causes, or the biggest single cause, for staff taking time out, because, obviously, of the pressure that they're under.

It has been now, as I said, some 30 months since the health board has been in special measures. The current Cabinet Secretary has been in position for now 16 or 17 months—maybe even a little longer than that—and I hope he will use the opportunity in responding to this debate today to actually give an honest and frank assessment of where he sees the health board going. It cannot be right that, after 30 months and with the health Secretary in position now for that length of time, we cannot get an honest assessment of how the Welsh Government, with all the resource that the Welsh Government has at its disposal, is not getting to grips with the waiting times, with the staff retention and recruitment and, above all, the budget issues that this health board faces; until recently, it was projected to have, for this financial year, a budget deficit of £50 million. As I understand it, the latest figure indicates that the deficit situation now has been brought down to £36 million, but, in itself, that's the biggest budget deficit as I understand it that this health board will have incurred in a single financial year.

When you do look at the waiting times and the graphic examples that have been given by Members from north Wales, and in particular from my benches here by the regional Member Mark Isherwood and the Aberconwy Member Janet Finch Saunders, of people waiting 12, 18 months, in excess of 100 weeks for treatment, that is something that, in the twenty-first century, we just should not be tolerating. When you actually look at the numbers, if you take the 52-week wait for routine surgery, it has risen from 94 patients in 2015 to, now, a figure of 2,491 in September 2017. That's a rise of 2,500 per cent. Those sorts of figures, for most people, are just incomprehensible. Most people, all they want—they don't expect instant treatment, but they expect a reasonable time for that treatment to be provided.

I do hope that the Cabinet Secretary will give us something hard and tangible that we'll be able to hang on this debate to say that the waiting time situation in the Betsi health board area is being grasped by the Cabinet Secretary and his officers in Cathays Park along with the health board to address these spiralling waits. Accident and emergency, for example, is another area of huge concern that my colleague Darren Millar has highlighted in First Minister's questions and, I believe, in questions to your good self, Cabinet Secretary, with regard to the appalling waiting times that people are having to face in Glan Clwyd, in his own hospital, which serves his constituents, where under 70 per cent of people are being seen within the four-hour target—your own target. Surely, you do not agree with that situation being allowed in a major hospital here in Wales. And so, I would ask, in your address to the debate this afternoon, that you do give us a clear route-map out of special measures that we can hang the hat of this debate on, so that Members can go back to their constituents and say what progress has been made since the health board went into special measures. I do hope that you will clarify the budget situation that the health board finds itself in, because this is your opportunity do that.

Above all, I do hope that you will give us something meaningful on staff recruitment and retention, because without the staff on the front line within our health board, whether that be in a primary or secondary environment, there is no health service. As Angela Burns touched on, they are the backbone, they are the blood that makes our health service work, and it is incumbent on you, with the levers at your disposal, to be able to offer a significant and substantial package of measures that address the chronic understaffing that the Betsi health board faces, both in primary and secondary care.