I'd like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for health for bringing forward today's statement. It's 2018—70 years of our national health service and, wow, what a rollercoaster it has been. Like you, Cabinet Secretary, I absolutely recognise the determination and passion of Aneurin Bevan. He saw a need, he built on ideas put forward during the war years, and as part of Attlee's Government he was tasked with trying to bring our country back together again. He moved forward with the NHS, that amazing construct that we have today.

Just very briefly, Deputy Presiding Officer, some of the innovations and extraordinary celebrations we should have—1958: the introduction of polio and diptheria vaccinations. They used to kill people by the millions—gone. How wonderful is that? In 1968: the first-ever heart transplant in Britain was carried out in Marylebone by Donald Ross. In 1978: Louise Brown. In 1998: NHS Direct. In 2008: a debate we only had last week about extending this—the national programme to vaccinate girls against the human papilloma virus. What wonderful marvels that we have now done this. 

So, I say to you, Cabinet Secretary, Aneurin Bevan—he started something, but it's now become ours, and it's become ours and every political party's, every politician's, but above all, yours as Vaughan, mine as Angela, and that of others in this room. This is our NHS. It saved my life three years ago, it saves the lives of many people, it's always there when the chips are down, and we shouldn't forget that, and it is our job to move this NHS forward.

I would like to ask you, Cabinet Secretary, if we go back to Bevan's overriding principles—I just want to ask you three questions on three of them. A shared responsibility for health between the people of Wales and the NHS: how can we really get the people of Wales to buy into this, focusing on prevention not just cure, focusing on not just the obviously unwell, such as someone with cancer or a broken leg, but those who have illnesses buried deep within their souls that they cannot be seen so easily, people with mental health issues? How do we deal with those people who aren't sick in the conventional sense of the word, but are vulnerable, elderly, frail and need that help? How do we rewrite and strengthen that contract between the people of Wales and our NHS?

Another Bevan principle is a service that values people, and above all values, I think, the staff. There are some 80,000 staff who work in our NHS and this is why we've repeatedly called for a rapid access to treatment scheme for NHS staff. We lose over 900 years of staff hours every year because people are away, stressed and sick. You talked about the letters that you receive praising the NHS, and I get those letters. I get letters praising the staff and I get letters despairing of where the system has broken down, and where people have been let down because they can't get an appointment, they can't get a return call, they can't get the treatment they need. And those staff who deliver that NHS service of ours, day in, day out, Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, mother's day, father's day, whenever it is—they need our support, because they're working in a system that is flawed, that is creaking at the seams and that doesn't have enough resources to go around. So, what can you do, Cabinet Secretary, to really put those amazing 80,000-plus people at the heart of our NHS, because if we do not do that, then the 3 million people of Wales will be let down, and we want to keep that NHS going? 

Finally, how do we get that true patient and public accountability? I'd like to answer that partly, and challenge you to answer it partly—it's about the political football. Today, we had the Bevan Commission saying that too often the NHS is used as a political football. On Monday, Jeremy Hunt announced the most extraordinary app that can now be used by people to do all sorts of things, from making appointments to getting NHS 111 calls, to seeing what their prescription medicines are to reordering—a great idea. There's fantastic innovation going on in Scotland, particularly with the technology. Here in Wales, our own organ donation transplantation. All the home nations have great ideas. Cabinet Secretary, will you commit to really looking at how we can learn from best practice not just within our own country, but best practice in England, in Scotland, in Northern Ireland, so that the NHS that belongs to every single person in the United Kingdom is here in 70 years' time, not just for Aneurin Bevan, but for you and for me, and for everyone else in this room?