Thank you for those questions—I'll take them in turn. On your point about ministerial time-limited appointments, we're always looking to review not just our ability to have a transparent framework for intervention and escalation, but the tools that we then have to intervene and support boards that are not performing as they would wish to or as we would wish them to as well.

On your point about those organisations in heightened stages of escalation, of the three organisations in targeted intervention, two of them have made real improvement in their financial management over this year. I said earlier in the committees that I don't expect them to break even this year, but I think they've made real improvements from the start of this year over the course of the year.

Now, for Hywel Dda, the deterioration reported in the Assembly is obviously a problem. To be fair to the board leadership, they've had enough recognition and insight to say that that is a challenge that they themselves need to do something about. They've been supported by the Government with the reviews that we've had done of their financial management, and of the zero-based budgeting review as well. The first report will be taken through the public board, I think, if not this month then next month, so there'll be, again, public board conversations—[Interruption.]—I'm dealing with your question—about how they will deal with the financial challenges they have got.

Part of our challenge is that having additional ministerial time-limited appointments could help us to deal with some of the specific challenges that exist in different organisations. For example, if you have a challenge in financial management, is it about appointing someone to deal with that particular aspect, to sit either on the board or be part of the executive team to help them to get over that particular issue if other parts of that organisation are running and working well? As you know, in north Wales the organisation is in special measures, but much of healthcare in north Wales continues to be performed and delivered at a high quality across different communities. It's about how we have enough tools to be able to support organisations that need to improve.

The point about the escalation framework is that it is both about intervention and scrutiny, so it's about what we need to do to intervene to support organisations and having a heightened level of scrutiny as they go about their business. So, this is a proposal about the potential for time-limited appointments to help fix some of those potential individual skills gaps in an organisation, in addition to what we already have. 

And on the point about public voice and the way in which the public can make meaningful contributions to board meetings, there's a challenge here about the different roles we expect the board to cover. So, we want a board that's got the skills and the oversight to be part of the challenge and support that the executive team need and that we require, so that's where we have all of our independent appointments that take place on those boards. These are organisations that typically have a budget of around about £1 billion, and you and I know that the NHS is a wonderful and complex organisation, multifaceted, so, actually, that's quite a challenge, and so we set high standards for the board members we want to see come in. That means, though, that those boards don't often reflect the nature of the local population.

Some of that is understandable, because if you have a limited number of independent members, unless you're going to expand that massively, then in whichever board area you choose, you'll find that those independent members don't necessarily represent all the people within that community where that citizen's voice matters. That's why the proposals we've been looking at are if you're going to have something else around that, would that be about having associate members to try and have a greater representative voice around that board table when those discussions are taking place, and not just about, if you like, the essence of having those board meetings taking place in public?

Because if you look at boards around Wales, actually, on a leadership level across chief executives and chairs, women are well-represented, but not everywhere in all of the independent members or all the executive leadership positions, and, actually, the position on black and Asian origin communities is certainly not one that reflects the country that we are. So, there are challenges about our diversity as well as, frankly, the people that are the greatest participants and users of healthcare services. So, we do have socioeconomic challenges about a lack of diversity in board membership too, so we need to think about how to manage that appropriately, as well as boards themselves going out and being proactive in talking to and wanting to listen to communities. I think there's something different there about the role of a citizen's voice body. So, what do we expect boards to do regardless of the citizen's voice body, and then how do we expect them to work alongside those, and they obviously have a scrutiny role as well? 

And I say again: you know, I recognise the points you made about the parliamentary review. The review understandably didn't say that community health councils must stay or must go. That wasn't something that we particularly asked them to do, but they recognised the need to have citizen engagement. I've said on a regular basis in this place and outside it that if we want to have a strengthened citizen's voice body with a clear mission and purpose across health and social care, then we need change the legislative footing on which CHCs operate, and the title should change as well, because it's about looking at how they go across health and social care. The challenge is that CHCs are actually set out in primary legislation, so we've got to be able to change that. This isn't abolishing something and not replacing it; it's what comes in to take on board the citizen voice across health and social care, and how we properly engage with the very constructive conversation we had with the national board of CHCs about a change in their potential role and remit for a successful organisation across the health and care sector. And that remains our objective within the Government, rather than seeking to diminish or avoid having a voice for the citizen. 

On the duty of candour, again, this goes back to the point that I made in the statement. There are different views about how far legislation can change organisational culture, although we all recognise that legislation can have a part to play in that. Other parts of the UK have a duty of candour, and part of what's been interesting commentary in response to the White Paper has been about whether that should be a duty on individuals. Of course, lots and lots of individual healthcare professionals already have duties in this area, but in particular it's an organisational duty of candour about the decisions and choices that it makes. So, I'm keen, as I said, that we take forward that policy. We have to think about whether legislation could and should be part of that answer, but that is about promoting an organisational culture, rather than being the only thing that we could and should expect.