Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. The past weekend highlighted just what amazing people we have working in our NHS and the wider health and social care sector: doctors and nurses doing double shifts, GPs sleeping in their surgeries, staff walking miles in blizzard conditions, all to ensure that patients continued to receive world-class care, despite sub-zero temperatures and snowdrifts. Therefore, I wish to place on record my thanks to all our NHS staff for the amazing job they do, day in, day out, whatever the conditions and the pressures they are put under. I may disagree with you from time to time on policy, but I will always stand shoulder to shoulder with you in defending our NHS staff.

The only problem with our NHS workforce is that there aren't enough of them. Cabinet Secretary, I welcome the additional investment your Government has made in non-medical healthcare professionals and the increase in training places in Wales. However, there are increasing shortages in some areas of our NHS. As our NHS evolves, the staff requirements will change. Therefore, Cabinet Secretary, how will the LHBs and Health Education and Improvement Wales work together to take a more strategic approach to workforce planning in our NHS? Planning is essential to embrace the changes ahead. Will HEIW be undertaking an audit of staff within each speciality in order to address any shortfalls? When we look at diagnostic staff, Cancer Research UK tell us that there is no data on vacancy levels within endoscopy. If we are to maximise the effect of the faecal immunochemical test on bowel cancer, we must ensure that there are sufficient numbers of staff able to conduct colonoscopies. Cabinet Secretary, do you or HEIW have any plans to create a non-medical endoscopist training programme within NHS Wales?

Of course, the majority of patient interaction within the NHS comes at the GP surgery, despite the fact that general practice receives just over 7 per cent of the NHS budget. Cabinet Secretary, do you support the Royal College of General Practitioners's call to increase the spending on general practice to at least 11 per cent? The royal college have also stated that GP training places need to be around 200 per year. You have made progress in increasing the number of training places in recent years, but do you have any plans to increase this further?

Finally, Cabinet Secretary, NHS England have announced a state-backed indemnity scheme for GPs over the border. Therefore, do you have any plans to introduce a similar scheme for Welsh GPs? As we celebrate the NHS’s seventieth birthday, it is important to highlight that it wouldn’t exist without our excellent staff, and we must do all we can to show our NHS staff how much we value them, both in monetary terms and also in terms of increasing staff.