Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Minister, can I thank you for your statement? I share your ambition. I want this to be a health board that has turned around in terms of its performance and to be the best-performing health board in Wales and, indeed, the whole of the United Kingdom, if at all possible, rather than consistently for many things—not all, but for many things—being at the bottom of the UK league table, and certainly at the bottom of the Wales league table.

I would ask you this fundamental question, though, and I think it's one that many people are starting to ask me, now, and that is: special measures—is it a help or a hindrance? Because I'm not sure the special measures arrangements in Wales, which are different than they are over the border in England, are working well. I think that—you know, the information and the feedback that I get from clinicians, from non-exec directors and others is that, sometimes, because of those special measures arrangements, it takes a long time to get decisions through the health board when, sometimes, there needs to be rapid action in order to sort things out. 

I was pleased to hear you make reference to the fact that you've recently signed off the investment in community musculoskeletal services, an expansion in the number of orthopaedic consultants and some capital investment around that. But it's taken over 18 months for that capital programme to be signed off by you, as a Minister, and I don't know whether that's a problem because your officials haven't brought it to your attention sufficiently well—I've no idea how your systems work within Government. But it's taken an extraordinary amount of time. And, of course, we know that the six orthopaedic consultants are largely because of the tragic circumstances that saw a regulation 28 prevention of further deaths order in relation to the Megan Lloyd-Williams case—the Flintshire lady, 77 years old, who broke a hip in September last year and ended up, unfortunately, passing away when she shouldn't have passed away had she got the quality of healthcare that she should have been provided. 

It concerns me that it takes an event like that—a 'never' event—where there's tragedy in a family and a lady losing her life in order to see people sign on the dotted line so that the plans for improvement can actually get the finance that they need. It's a concern to me that, for example, the national hip fracture database puts Glan Clwyd Hospital, Ysbyty Gwynedd—and I heard you saying that we should aspire to be everything like Ysbyty Gwynedd, but it puts that hospital as well, and Wrexham Maelor, in the top 10 worst performing hospitals on that database in the whole of the United Kingdom, out of 176 hospitals. That concerns me, and I want to see this situation turn around.

Now, there has been some progress; I acknowledge that. There was progress in maternity services, largely because 10,000 people marched on the streets in Rhyl—myself and the Deputy Presiding Officer included—to campaign for a new special care baby unit in north Wales. I'm delighted that we secured that investment—that was the right decision, and I fully supported the First Minister in making that decision.

I acknowledge that there has been some improvement on the GP front as well. I've seen it in terms of some of those practices that were at risk and no longer at risk. But, of course, we've still got a number of GP practices that have shut their doors once and for all, tens of thousands of patients having to face the upheaval of registering with new GPs or being transferred to new GPs. And whilst I accept that you've got some coming back into general practice, rather than being health board managed, the fact is that Betsi's got more health board-managed GP facilities than any other part of the country, and that still concerns me.

I took a visit to Wrexham Maelor Hospital yesterday to visit the emergency department, and I have to say a more dedicated team you will not find in our hospitals. But they were telling me about some of the pressures. When I arrived there, 10:30 in the morning, the longest wait in that department was 11.5 hours, and by the time I left it was 3.5 hours because of the hard work of people trying to make sure that people were getting the flow through the hospital. But I was concerned to hear that on some of the GP out-of-hours services, which you've taken out of the special measures programme, there were still gaps in rotas in parts of north Wales. Now, that's not acceptable. I can't understand how you seem relaxed about the situation with GP out-of-hours services, when they're telling me, the front-line staff, that there are gaps in those GP out-of-hours rotas. That concerns me. 

You made reference to the change at the top of the organisation, and there has been a lot of change, but it seems to me that it's continuous churn. You know, the finance director's leaving, the medical director's also in the process of departing the organisation. We were informed by you in a statement in this Chamber just last year that a turnaround director had been appointed. Of course, it was one of the previous acting chief executives of the organisation, on whose watch a lot of this mess that we're trying to mop up had been caused. We said it was the wrong person for the job at that time—