Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd, and it's my pleasure and privilege to present this legislative proposal to the Senedd today. It has been a bit of a habit amongst politicians in Wales sometimes to say, 'We have too many managers in the NHS; they're not doing their jobs properly'. I've probably been guilty of that in the past myself, but the truth is that we will not deliver the kinds of services that our constituents—every single one of our constituents—want and need unless we have a service that is effectively managed.

Now, it's also absolutely true that we have many excellent managers working at all levels in our NHS in Wales, and they strive and succeed in planning and delivering, with their clinical colleagues, excellent services. But there can be none of us in this Chamber who are not aware of the widely shared concerns about capacity, sometimes about competence, and certainly about consistency of performance in the management of our services. And there are very valid concerns about accountability. So, this is why I propose to us today a Bill on health service management. What exactly we might call it—an NHS accountability and transparency Bill—that could be for further debate. But the purpose of this Bill, its main purpose, would be to establish a professional body for NHS managers in Wales. Now, this has been portrayed in some sections of the press and by some responding to the debate as an attack on the service. It is definitely not that. What it is actually doing is acknowledging the huge importance of managers to the effectiveness of the service, and, if we gave them a proper professional body that registered them, we would be putting their contribution on a par with their clinical colleagues, and I think that definitely deserves consideration.

So, I'm proposing a role for this professional body to set core professional competencies for people in management and administration at all levels, that these competencies should be value based. If you're training as a nurse, the very first thing you get is training in the values that the service expects for you. We don't currently offer that consistently to those administering and managing the services.