This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the creation of the NHS. It is likely that everyone in Wales will, at some time, need the services of the NHS. I know from my own personal experience how important the NHS is. In April this year, my wife suffered a series of strokes and it is a great comfort to know that the excellent care that she received is available to everyone, irrespective of their background or financial circumstances.

The NHS faces many challenges. We have an ageing population, the number of people with long-term health conditions is rising and the cost of treatments and medical technology is growing. The NHS needs to adapt and to modernise to meet these challenges if it is to flourish and provide the world-class services that we all want to see. But its core principle must remain; a free health service available to everyone is still the envy of the world. We all want to see the NHS in Wales delivering high-quality healthcare to everyone. To achieve this, we need a well-resourced and high-performing workforce, a workforce that feels valued and supported. However, it is clear that the recruitment and retention of staff has become a major challenge facing the NHS in Wales.

The Welsh Government has constantly failed to train enough staff for the future. Training places offered by NHS health boards remain unfilled. The number of Welsh domiciled students applying to medical school is declining, and in spite of the Welsh Government offering an NHS bursary for the last four academic years, Wales has failed to fill all commissioned places. Recruiting staff has proved a problem. The impact of the Welsh Government flagship ‘Train. Work. Live.’ scheme has been difficult to measure, with vague measures of success.

I welcome the decision by UK Government to relax immigration rules to allow more non-EU skilled doctors and nurses to work in our NHS. Increased pressure and workload on our current NHS workforce has led to difficulties in retaining staff. We have the lowest number of GPs working in the NHS in Wales since 2013. More than 60,000 nurses have left the NHS since 2015, either through retirement or resignation. This failure to retain, recruit and train the staff has had serious financial consequences. Spending on agency and locum staff reached £164 million; this represents an increase of over 20 per cent compared with the previous years of expenditure. This is not sustainable in the long term, Deputy Presiding Officer. We need a clear strategy from the Welsh Government for future workforce planning. Closer cross-border working and effective incentives must be used to fill geographical and specialist gaps in our health service. The delivery of healthcare is a fast-changing world. We cannot rely on systems to deliver healthcare that were formulated in the 1940s to meet the challenges of this twenty-first century.

Deputy Presiding Officer, the Welsh Government must bring forward a clear strategy to address the problems of the recruitment and retention of NHS staff. This is vital if we are to create the well-resourced and high-performing NHS that the people of Wales need and deserve. If we don't care for our NHS, who else is going to? I'm pretty sure that the NHS will not care for us either.

There are certain areas: the NHS and carers. Mental health is a big issue that we have to look at, especially our veterans. We have to look after them. Also, a couple of months ago, there was a problem with computers and doctors could not get in touch with their patients. That's not good enough. A lot of patients suffered and a lot of hospitals were without work. That is not development. We have to have a plan B. From hospital to hospital, standards are a bit different, so from doctors to doctors, there are different pressures. The quality of our service is great, but delivery is a little bit lacking in certain areas. To modernise our system, the pay system must be equal, the pay must be given to our own doctors and nurses, and they should work in a comfortable and suitable environment in the best hospitals in the world.

Finally, Deputy Presiding Officer, as I said, I will always be proud of the NHS: it is the envy of the world. We must care for our NHS, at any cost, and then the NHS will look after us. Thank you.