I have previously described how 'A Healthier Wales' sets out our commitment to enable health and social care services to meet population need—as I've said before, the first time we have ever had a joint health and social care plan with ownership between health, local government and the third sector. A transformation programme will bring pace and purpose to how we invest in people and how we build staff capacity, and we know that improving system capacity to plan effectively and efficiently is essential. We're delivering on a key priority to work with health and social care organisations and partners to simplify the planning and delivery of our services. Our amendment recognises the comprehensive work of our staff within the NHS, within local government, and wider partners, to plan and build capacity around and within NHS Wales to meet demand for services throughout the year. We, of course, heard some of this, in relation to specific planning for winter, in the earlier comments of David Melding.

We've been open about the challenges felt by out-of-hours primary care, critical care and emergency ambulance services, and we also know that, despite this pressure, the vast majority who require these services continue to receive timely access and high standards of care—once again, thanks to our compassionate and dedicated staff. As an example, the latest available figures show people categorised as 'immediately life threatened' in our red category of emergency ambulance calls receive a response in just over five minutes on average, and Dawn Bowden was right to point out that our model for emergency ambulance services is being copied in Scotland and England. We've been clear about how we're targeting national support for these services, with a clear understanding of demand and how best to manage it. That will help us to deliver sustainable out-of-hours primary care as well as critical care services. I've recently announced an additional £5 million to be made available this year for critical care, which will help us to create the capacity that is required over winter and to create a foundation for sustainable improvement.

We have commissioned an independent review of ambulance services and the amber category to understand whether improvements can be made to the management of patients and, of course, we'll have a statement on that next month and an opportunity for Members to consider that in advance. There is significant work under way in all three areas to focus on the need to recognise and understand pressures and plan to meet them. Our plan is to help support front-line staff to deliver those high-performing services, focusing on experience, outcome and value.

As to developing a national plan to address pressures on services, 'A Healthier Wales' describes our commitment to delivering a whole-system approach, where all services are delivered seamlessly and wrapped around the needs of the individual. It is imperative that we do not consider services in isolation. We should resist the regular calls in this place and in others to create new and piecemeal specific plans, but concentrate on delivering action that we have set out and agreed in our long-term plan.

On bed numbers—a point was made at various points in the debate—we actually have a lower occupancy rate than in England and more beds, proportionately, than the system in England. Now, specifically on critical care, I made reference to the £5 million this year to help support a permanent increase in the number of critical care beds, and that does underline our commitment to strengthening critical care and we recognise that that is necessary, not only for the winter, but in the longer term. That follows my recent announcement of £15 million of recurrent funding from the next financial year for these essential services.

On our emergency ambulance services, we already have a national plan. The Welsh ambulance service trust has an approved plan up to 2021, based on commissioning intentions that are set out by the chief ambulance commissioner. Members will, no doubt, be interested to know that the collaborative commissioning arrangements that we have in Wales have recently been copied in England. We know there are more paramedics working in Wales than ever before, and, since 2014, the number of paramedic training places has more than doubled—not by accident, but by deliberate choices made by Welsh Labour leadership.

On primary care out-of-hour services, there's been a significant and collective focus on this area over the past year. As part of our broader plan, work is under way to develop a new model of out-of-hours primary care, modelled on seamless integration with other services through the 111 service. And I'm pleased to hear both in this debate and in recent weeks recognition of the successful impact that the 111 service has had where it's been rolled out. I'd caution Members who would demand an immediate roll-out of that service across the country. Part of the success has been to understand the demand of each area and to build capacity in primary care support and to make sure that we have the right staff in the right place to deliver the quality of service.