Questions now from the party leaders. The Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price. 

Thank you, Llywydd. First Minister, during your first winter in charge as health Minister, 80 per cent of those attending accident and emergency departments were accepted, transferred or released within 24 hours. That is, of course, lower than the target of 95 per cent. Last month, only 77.8 per cent of people were seen within four hours. This is the worst record for any December to date. Can you explain why the performance of A&E departments during your tenure as health Minister, and then as finance Minister, and now as First Minister, has gone from bad to worse?

Wel, Llywydd, that is a very partial and unfair description of the work that emergency departments in Wales have done over this winter. It is certainly true that the number of people entering A&E departments on an emergency basis was the highest ever on record in the month of December, and, despite that, the system has been more resilient in this winter than the year before. We have seen reductions in delayed transfers of care; we have seen reductions in delays in ambulance handovers; we have seen improvements in the resilience of the system, with fewer hospitals declaring themselves to be under the greatest level of pressure.

The Member is true in picking one example where the system has been under greatest strain, and that is seeing people within the four-hour target. In fact, the majority of health boards in Wales have improved their performance there. The all-Wales figure is brought down by the fact that, in two health boards, the performance has deteriorated.

Llywydd, the median time that people who go to A&E departments in Wales in December had to wait, despite the pressures that the system is under, was two hours and 25 minutes, from the time they arrived, not to the time they were seen, but to the time that they had been seen, treated and either admitted to the hospital or discharged home. I think that is a tremendous tribute to the work that goes on by the dedicated staff who work under such pressures of numbers and conditions, and that's where I would put my focus this afternoon. 

I have to say that I regret the First Minister’s answer. The performance in England, which is already ahead of Wales, has continued to improve over the last 12 months, whilst the performance figures for Scotland are consistently over 90 per cent in terms of people being seen within the target time. Now, in looking under the surface and looking underneath that national figure, then we see even more complex examples in terms of performance. Wrexham Maelor Hospital has the A&E department that is performing worst across the UK. There, almost 50 per cent of people had to wait over four hours to be seen. Glan Clwyd Hospital in St Asaph is the third worst in the UK, and almost 700 people last month had to wait over 12 hours there. To put this in some perspective, only 210 people had to wait over 12 hours to be seen in all Scottish hospitals in November. And when we turn to patients being held in ambulances, almost two thirds of patients wait more than a quarter of an hour in an ambulance outside Maelor and Glan Clwyd hospitals. Are these failings so grave now that they endanger life?

Well, Llywydd, it is unacceptable that people are kept waiting in some places in the way that the Member described, and the performance at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital is not acceptable to the Welsh NHS, it's not acceptable to the Minister and not acceptable to the board of Betsi Cadwaladr either. Huge efforts are going on to make sure that the position there is improved for the future.

The Member chooses to point today to England as his preferred comparison for Wales. Let me tell him what the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said in January, this January, about the performance in England, where the college said

'bed occupancy remains close to 95 per cent' and

'conditions for patients and staff in Emergency Departments'

—in England 'are very tough indeed.'

And they are very tough in Wales too, but there is no easy answer to point to somewhere that has everything right. We know that isn't the case. On the whole, the performance across Wales in this winter has been an improvement on where we were last year, and where there are problems, we will tackle them.

Well, I asked you, First Minister, whether this situation puts lives at risk. Well, over the—you didn’t answer that point, and over the last year, the coroner in north Wales has presented a notice to the NHS in Wales in order to prevent deaths in the future on four different occasions. In these reports, the coroner draws specific attention to concerns about ambulances being held back, a shortage of staff and delays in providing treatment in A&E departments. And in his most recent report, in the case of Gladys May Williams, John Gittins, the chief coroner for north Wales, said that there is no sign that progress is being made, despite the fact that he voiced concerns time and time again. He also said that he’s extremely concerned that the lives of patients are being put at risk as a result of this.

Yesterday, before the Public Accounts Committee, Andrew Goodall, the chief executive of NHS Wales, admitted that the performance of A&E departments in Betsi Cadwaladr was unacceptable, and had deteriorated since you put the board under special measures in June 2015, three and a half years ago. And that was partly as a result of losing sight on the performance of A&E because it wasn’t an area that you prioritised for intervention from the outset.

Do you regret that now? Do you accept that the scale of this problem is so grave that we must have an independent review as a matter of urgency to look at the condition of emergency care across the whole of Wales, starting in north Wales? Or, as happened in the case of Tawel Fan, do we have to wait for further pain and unnecessary suffering before you will be willing to take responsibility and to take action?

Llywydd, I've already said that we accept that. Performance in some parts of the NHS has not been acceptable. We are aware of that because the checks and balances in the NHS, the reports we get from people such as coroners, such as Health Inspectorate Wales, from within the system itself, give us the information that we need in order to be able to focus on those places, where the general improvement we have seen in the NHS in Wales over this winter has not been apparent.

Llywydd, I absolutely do not agree that what we need is another report into the Welsh NHS. We know the things that need to be done. We know where the pinch points are to be found. The job is to get on and make sure that the general improvements are shared elsewhere and everywhere, and we don't need months and months taken up in another inquiry of the sort the Member suggests to give us that information.

Leader of the Welsh Conservatives—Paul Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, a recent survey by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust brought to light the disturbing fact that one in 20 people in the UK do not believe that the Holocaust really happened. In light of this, what is the Welsh Government doing to ensure that this denial and the prevalence of anti-Semitism are addressed, and that we work to keep the devastating memory of the Holocaust relevant so that future generations can learn from history?

Llywydd, can I begin by agreeing with what the Member has said? It is shocking to read that figure, and very hard indeed to credit how it can be true that that number of people would have been captured by that sense of denial of one of the most awful occurrences of the whole of the twentieth century. The job of addressing it falls partly to Government, of course, and this Government will want to do everything we can. I was very pleased to be able to join other Members of this Assembly at the Holocaust memorial service here in Cardiff at the end of last week—an immensely dignified occasion where we heard directly from some people who are still alive who were caught up in those shocking events.

We will want to do what we can, but the problem, as I'm sure the leader of the opposition would acknowledge, is wider than Government; it is a cultural issue more broadly in our society. There is a need to mobilise a whole range of different actions that can be taken to make sure that we never—we never—accept that people who were the victims of those dreadful events are either forgotten or, at the worst, are blamed themselves for what took place.

I agree with you, First Minister; we all have a responsibility. Now, the figures released by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust demonstrate just how far we need to go to ensure that, as a society, we have a solid understanding of what happened during the Holocaust. We are all bound by responsibility to ensure that happens. Research from the Antisemitism Policy Trust found that online searches looking for information on the Holocaust being a hoax rise about 30 per cent every year on Holocaust Memorial Day, and anti-Semitic searches in Wales are higher than in any other part of the United Kingdom. We've also seen the number of racially motivated hate crimes increase here in Wales as well. I'm sure you'll agree with me that awareness and education are the best means of addressing this. Therefore, are you confident that learning about the Holocaust and the consequences of religious or ethnic genocide are given enough emphasis in Wales's new curriculum?

I do believe that those points are well understood amongst those people who are responsible for designing the new curriculum. In that service held in Cardiff City Hall on Friday, amongst the most moving parts of a moving service were the two young people from Wales who had visited Auschwitz as part of a programme run by the Welsh Government and who came back to reflect to the rest of us the lessons that they felt that they had learnt, and to say to us as well how they were using those lessons to talk to other young people in their own age range and in their own institutions about the effect that that experience had had on them.

There'll be other people, I know, around the Chamber, who've made the same visit; I did myself some years ago. It was an overwhelming experience in many ways; it was very hard just to take in the nature of what you saw in front of you and to try to make sense of what you were seeing and to think of what lessons we all need to draw from it. Making sure that we have young people in Wales who continue to do that and to help the rest of us to draw those lessons, I think, is a demonstration of the way that these things are taken seriously in the education system in Wales and of our determination that they will continue to be so.

Of course, with few remaining survivors of the Holocaust alive today, it is our duty to continue to educate our younger generations to have even the most basic understanding of those events and to support the commemorations taking place across Wales to promote awareness. And as politicians, we have a responsibility to show leadership on this issue, we must ensure that anti-Semitic rhetoric is not normalised in society and we must do what we can to end Holocaust revisionism. We must also collectively consider the context of how we discuss anti-Semitism in order to avoid further exacerbating this issue, and I'm sure you agree with these sentiments, First Minister. Can you therefore outline what work the Welsh Government is doing to support commemorations taking place across Wales now and in the future and commit to ensure that appropriate resources will be available in order for these to continue to take place?

Well, Llywydd, can I thank the leader of the opposition for choosing to use his questions this afternoon for this really important matter and to do so just at the point where those commemorations across Wales have happened over this last weekend? We do have resources that the Welsh Government devotes to assist in that. We will certainly want to go on doing so into the future. I'll think carefully about the points that he's made in his final contribution in this part of our proceedings this afternoon, and some of the things that Paul Davies has said are echoes of the contribution we heard on Friday from a survivor of that Holocaust experience, when she challenged everybody who was in that service to do the things that individuals need to do to make sure that those memories are kept alive, that the ceremonies that we have put in place do continue and that we are able to return year on year, explaining to those who were directly affected by these things how we go on bearing witness to their suffering.

The leader of the UKIP group—Gareth Bennett. 

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, planning is an issue that is often contentious. One of the things that you've done in forming your Government is that you've moved planning to the department for local government and housing. I think that move is theoretically a good thing: to have the same Minister responsible for housing, for local government and for planning. This could, hopefully, lead to a more joined-up approach. Now, I wonder, does this move signify that your Government believes that the planning process in Wales has to be more responsive to the wishes of local people?

Well, Llywydd, Gareth Bennett is right in saying that the purpose of putting local government planning and housing in the same portfolio is to do everything that we can to make those things more joined together and to make the planning system more effective in delivering on some of our major policy ambitions here in Wales, including the provision of new and affordable housing, and that, indeed, does lie behind the decision to bring those matters together in the one portfolio.

I see that you need to make things more effective in terms of your objectives as a Government. Sometimes, that may cause conflict with the need to be responsive to public opinion. So, to look at a case in point that arose recently—one of many that I could raise—we have the Hendy windfarm development proposed for an area of mid Wales near Llandrindod Wells, a windfarm of some size that was rejected by local people who submitted hundreds of objections to the plan. It was also rejected by Powys County Council, which also voted against the scheme, and, additionally, the planning inspector declared against the scheme when he made his report. It does seem odd, therefore, given this opposition from almost all quarters, that your Welsh Government has been trying to railroad this development through. Now, I'm not asking you to comment on this particular case, but do you think it is wise in future for your Government to take decisions that can have a huge environmental impact on a local area and which seem to totally fly in the face of local democracy?

Well, the Member is right, I'm not going to comment on the individual case. There is an important point behind what he is saying, which is that any of these matters is a balance between many different factors at play. The planning process is designed to try and achieve that balance, but any person or interest group taking part in any particular example will have strong views. In the end, these things have to be reconciled and they end up being reconciled in a particular decision. Not everybody will agree with that, it's impossible to imagine that they would, but I think that the planning policy we have in Wales and the policies that were recently refreshed by my colleague Lesley Griffiths, when she was responsible for this matter, offer us the best opportunity to make sure that the process is able to hear from all of those who have an interest in a matter, to weigh up the different outcomes that are being pursued, and then in the end to make a decision to allow a matter to be moved forward.

I think, First Minister, of course, theoretically, you're right, there is a need for balance, but I'm not sure how much balance there has been in this particular case. Of course, we're not necessarily just looking at that case. But I do think there is an issue with local democracy at stake here, and I do feel that the people who live near Hendy do need more than warm words; they actually need to feel that the Welsh Government is likely to listen to them and to listen to their concerns. Of course, UKIP's position is that we support local referenda for major planning decisions so that local residents do have the final say.

Do you think, if the Welsh Government proceeds with this turbine plan, that the residents in Hendy, and in other theoretical cases where there are similar planning issues—do you really think they're going to believe that the Welsh Government is listening to them? Do you think that people anywhere else in Wales facing planning problems would feel that the Welsh Government was listening to them?

Any constituency Member of this Assembly will be very familiar with instances in their own consistencies where people with strongly held views and differing views about particular planning applications will come to put those views to you. People whose views prevail go away feeling that the system has worked very well and that their voices were heard. People whose views are not on the winning side tend to go away feeling that the system hasn't delivered what they were hoping from it. That's just inevitable when you have matters on which people have strongly held but differing points of view.

The system we have is one with proper checks and balances in it that aims to provide all those people with strong views an opportunity to have those views heard, that takes into account expert advice alongside all of those things. I would much rather that we went about these matters in that careful and considered way, than to have a series of referendums around Wales in which a winner-takes-all result will leave even more people disillusioned with the process than the system that we've explored so far this afternoon.