I agree with Joyce Watson; we do need to have a reasoned debate about the health services, and I believe that this debate has been reasoned. There have been some passionate speeches, of course, inevitably, because people do feel very, very strongly that, in Pembrokeshire in particular, they are forgotten, neglected and abandoned by the health service and that their needs are not being properly looked after now, let alone in the future if ever these plans are put into effect.

Nobody denies the intractable problems that the health service faces throughout the whole of the United Kingdom—funding is a problem everywhere and needs, as we know, are growing. We have a national health service, but the national health service is nothing if it's not also a local service. You've only got to look at a map to see the geography of the Hywel Dda area. Pembrokeshire sticks out into the sea, and I think that the people of Pembrokeshire feel as though Hywel Dda are actually digging a great big moat between Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion and that they are drifting further and further from the centre of operations. Nobody can underestimate the degree of genuine feeling of alarm and fear that is represented by this unprecedented petition that we are debating today.

The fundamental problem that we are facing here is that the health service is totally undemocratic, and the major decisions are taken by technocrats who are not elected and we can't dismiss, and are ultimately not accountable. The community health councils are not elected and they can easily be stuffed with compliant members who won't live up to the expectations of the people who they are there to serve. This exercise in consultation that we're looking at today is, I think, an example of this also. Lee Waters referred to it as an impenetrable document and I absolutely agree with him—I've got it here. You only have to look at it to see that the decision, effectively, had been taken even before the consultation was started. It's no surprise that in paragraph 1.106 that the conclusion is that public support for what the health board is now going to endorse was driven by location. Well, what would you expect? People want hospital services that are close to where they live. I mean, it's the most obvious fact that you could imagine; you don't need a consultation with all its cost in order to arrive at this conclusion. Just a few paragraphs before that, the health board says: 

'It is important to recognise that there is very strong public support for another alternative across many parts of Pembrokeshire'.

In other words, 'none of the above' is what people in Pembrokeshire want—that's just not on offer. If this was a true consultation, there would've been the alternative that might've been acceptable to the people of Pembrokeshire. What an extraordinary consultation that it's proved to be. It's a 'nonsultation' as far as most people in Pembrokeshire are concerned, and that, I think, is totally unacceptable. 

I totally agree, also, with what Rhun ap Iorwerth said on behalf of Plaid Cymru. The people have a right to expect that their main services that they're going to need, particularly in rural areas where transport links are poor, poverty levels are higher and the age of the population tends to be in the higher regions as well—they have a right to expect that their main services can be accessible within a reasonable distance. 

And I agree, also, with what Helen Mary Jones said, and others have alluded to also, in that we mustn't put the cart before the horse. We mustn't plan to close down major facilities that are fulfilling a vital need until we have got the building blocks in place for what is going to replace them. So, this, I think, has been handled in a most insensitive way.

And then, of course, we come to the elephant in the room in the form of the health Secretary, because ultimately, Hywel Dda is now under his supervision, just as Betsi Cadwaladr is in north Wales, and the Welsh Government can't simply wash its hands of responsibility for what's happening here. Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the Welsh Government to provide the funds for each of the health board areas, and I don’t underestimate the problems that the finance Secretary has in making his numbers add up. It’s impossible to do everything that people expect and want from the health service. Socialism is the language of priorities, as somebody once famously said a long time ago—indeed, I think, if I remember correctly, the man who actually founded the health service, Aneurin Bevan. Well, the people of Pembrokeshire expect that they will be a priority of the Welsh Government and if they are abandoned by the health Secretary, then he will go down and be remembered not as Aneurin Bevan is remembered today, as the saviour and founder of the health service, but he will go down as the Pontius Pilate of the health service, who ultimately failed the people of Pembrokeshire.