Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. The move to the clinical model for ambulance response was one of the most important changes made to unscheduled care. Ensuring patients got the right response based upon their need also sped up response times for the most vulnerable patients.

Unfortunately, other factors have hampered the Welsh ambulance service’s ability to deal with the large volumes of calls they receive that are not immediately life threatening. The Welsh ambulance service received almost half a million calls last year—around 1,300 calls per day—the vast majority of which were amber calls. Nearly 50 per cent of those amber calls took longer than 30 minutes to respond to. Some responses have taken many hours. We are losing thousands of hours each month from delays in handover at hospital. According to the latest ambulance quality indicators, this averages around 4,000 hours each month.

Cabinet Secretary, what assessment have you made of the impact LHB bed cuts are having upon the Welsh ambulance service? The majority of our hospitals are now operating at bed capacities of around 90 per cent. Do you consider this to be a safe level or will you be opposing further bed cuts?

Another drain on resources is the large number of repeated calls by frequent callers, which make up between 6 per cent to 7 per cent of all calls each month. Cabinet Secretary, what steps are the Welsh Government taking to reduce the number of frequent callers?

I welcome the fact that you are recruiting more nurses and paramedics to provide clinical advice over the phone, in order to help manage demand. Is this in addition to the roll-out of the 111 service, and will you outline how the roll-out is progressing? How will it complement the Welsh ambulance service?

Finally, Cabinet Secretary, a large number of calls to the ambulance service each month relate to dental problems, and dental issues are the top reason for calls to NHS Direct. Cabinet Secretary, with some patients facing a trip of 90 miles to see an NHS dentist and hundreds of people prepared to queue for five hours to register for an NHS dentist, it is clear that shortages are having an impact on the NHS as a whole. So, what is your Government doing to ensure shortages of staff in one area of the NHS are not leading to increased demand on unscheduled care services, particularly the Welsh ambulance service?

The Welsh ambulance service is a vital part of our NHS, and I hope that implementing the amber review team’s recommendations will lead to greater improvements for patients and staff. The Welsh public support the approach that delivers the best response, even if it’s not the quickest. However, that doesn't mean we leave patients waiting for hours in pain. Hopefully, the amber review will deliver similar improvements to those we saw in red call responses. Thank you.