Thanks to the Conservatives for bringing today's debate. UKIP supports their motion today. Like them, we acknowledge the problems with capacity in the Welsh NHS. Like them, we acknowledge that the pressures on the NHS are year-round pressures that do not just hit patient care in the winter months. And like them, we acknowledge the need for some long-term strategy, which here they're calling 'a national plan', to address these problems, rather than the sticking-plaster solutions that we seem to get year after year from the Welsh Labour Government here in Cardiff Bay.

We also support the Plaid Cymru amendments, which state that we also need to have a long-term strategy of funding social care, because if we keep on with the firefighting approach to health and social care, which Rhun ap Iorwerth referred to earlier today at health Minister's questions—I prefer to call it the sticking-plaster approach, but it's essentially the same thing—then that will also lead to increasing pressures on the NHS.

We acknowledge that the Labour Government have a plan, which they refer to in their amendment, but time is rather against their arguments now. They've had control of the Welsh NHS for the past 19 years, and health outcomes for many people in many parts of Wales still appear to be getting worse. The Labour Government have been plagued by public dissatisfaction over their running of the NHS since the very first term of the Assembly, and they're still facing essentially the same problems that they did then. As we know, and as has been mentioned, today we still have several health boards in special measures and targeted intervention.

The Welsh Government is now spending approaching 50 per cent of its budget on health. The upward trend surely cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely. We do need to move towards more preventative spending, as has been advocated by the future generations commissioner, among others. There was a proposal that she put forward that, in the long-term interests of the Welsh public, we needed to ring-fence at least a certain amount of the health budget and say that that was to be set aside for preventative spending. So, it had to be investment, for example, in promoting activities that might prevent obesity from occurring, rather than spending it on dealing with the effects of obesity.

The idea of preventative spending seems to me like a good one, but putting it into practice has proven difficult. We've ended up with an argument over what exactly constitutes preventative spending, so we now need to come up with a definition for this before such a policy can take shape. I don't want to get into the mechanics of what is and what isn't preventative spending today, but I feel that we must move towards a more strategic and more long-term approach, and I'm not convinced that the Welsh Labour Government is moving in that direction. So, that is why UKIP today supports the motion and the Plaid amendments and opposes the Labour amendment. Diolch yn fawr iawn.