In seeking to delete our motion, which reflects the concern expressed to us by staff and patients throughout the year about the capacity of the Welsh NHS to meet demand, the Welsh Government is recycling lines that we have heard so often before. I've participated in similar debates throughout the last four Assemblies, and each time the Welsh Government has dodged responsibility by asking us to recognise the work that it is doing to build the capacity of the Welsh NHS. So, let us be absolutely clear: NHS Wales has been led by Labour health Ministers in Labour-led Governments since 1999.

Referral-to-treatment targets continue to be missed and the accident and emergency waiting times target has not been met in 10 years. Betsi Cadwaladr university health board has been under Welsh Government control for three and a half years. Welsh Government figures showed last month that Wrexham Maelor and Glan Clwyd hospitals had achieved the worst A&E performance for Welsh hospitals since records began.

A fortnight after writing to the health board about a constituent who had waited three years for a knee operation and who is in constant pain, we only received an acknowledgment from the health board yesterday, after having to chase this with their new chair. A constituent who spent three hours with a neighbour who subsequently died while he waited in the snow for an ambulance following a stroke, then suffered six months of procrastination and misinformation after complaining to the Welsh ambulance service. Only my intervention with the chief executive secured an apology and a response half a year later.

This summer, more than 5,000 hours were lost because ambulances were delayed handing over patients at north Wales hospitals. Bed occupancy rates consistently exceed the recommended 85 per cent occupancy level to maintain patient safety standards. Over the last two years, almost 75,000 NHS Wales patients had their operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons. It is now clear that unscheduled care services are not just under extreme pressure in winter, but all year round.

This is why our motion calls on the Welsh Government to deliver a comprehensive national plan to address pressures and ensure that patients receive unplanned and critical care services that meet their needs, including preventative services such as community and out-of-hours care. As the WLGA Conservative group leader Peter Fox said last week, in a document supported by local government leaders from all parties, with £370 million of new moneys arriving from Westminster, an imaginative approach to funding preventative services to keep people out of hospitals is needed.

On a frustratingly regular basis I've also raised in this Chamber cases of third sector bodies providing effective preventative services that have lost their funding because of dumb commissioning that is adding millions to the cost pressure on statutory health and care services. At the request of campaigners I formed CHANT Cymru—Community Hospitals Acting Nationally Together—in the second Assembly, to campaign against the Labour Welsh Government's community hospital and bed closure programme. We promoted at national level the role of community hospitals in providing quality accessible local healthcare and reducing pressure on our general hospitals. After 2011, Labour pushed ahead with the closures, with the inevitable consequences we warned of.

The Welsh Government's policy of strengthening primary care and community based settings is not being matched by resource allocation. If patients are to receive care closer to their homes, it is imperative that general practice is properly resourced. In 2014, the Royal College of General Practitioners warned that the share of Welsh NHS funding for patient care in general practice had been falling for years. A BMA survey in 2016 found that 82 per cent of GPs were worried about the sustainability of their practice in Wales. In 2016, the vice-chair of the north Wales local medical committee stated, 'I cannot stress enough how near the edge things are, and how the time for action is now or never.' In 2016-17—the most recently available figures—Welsh general practice received the lowest share of NHS health spend in the UK, despite a rise in patient demand. Last week, BMA Wales figures showed that 21 GP practices have closed since October 2015, with a further 82 at risk and 29 now health-board managed, with the largest number in north Wales.

In pursing this agenda, some might say that the Welsh Government had been putting ideology before patients, where BMA Wales also provided evidence that managed practices do not provide value for money and that health boards are actively seeking to return them to independent GP contractors. Well done, Minister.