Thank you for the series of questions. I think I've dealt with the similar questions that have been asked about responsibility, which I accept for the national health service when it goes well and, indeed, when there are challenges too. Other people have asked about the same point about not just the scrutiny but actually additional support around the board, which I think I've dealt with in the last two questions by giving particular detail of the additional support and what that amounts to.

I just want to make two points in answer to the other broad questions that have been asked. On this point about special measures, special measures will continue until the health board has made real and sustained improvement. It will not end at a point that is convenient for me. If special measures were a construct simply to make a politician's life easy, then there would be little point in having them. The special measures engagement and the improvement framework—we have the independent advice from the Wales Audit Office and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, and indeed the role that the chief exec of NHS Wales plays. When they give advice that the health service in north Wales can be de-escalated, that is when it will take place, and not before and not at the convenience of a politician.

And I do have to take issue with your characterisation that the NHS in north Wales is a shambles. There is much to be proud of about the health service within north Wales. The language that you used in a broad-brush way to attack the whole service and what it achieves and then to say that you provide praise for front-line staff—you can't do both at the same time. Those same front-line staff who are achieving all therapy services being delivered within target, those people who are delivering the new and improved models of care to deliver more care at home, those health service staff who are delivering on a significant basis much better cancer performance within north Wales compared to colleagues across the border are the same people that you are suggesting are not doing their job in other areas. Now, there's a challenge here. I'm uniquely responsible for things that go wrong in the service. Now, that happens, that's the responsibility that goes with the role, but I'm looking for real and sustained achievement, not to make my life easy, but because it's the right thing to do for staff within north Wales and, crucially, it's the right thing that people in north Wales expect, and they deserve exactly the same high-quality care that every other part of our country does as well.