And I'll be coming to retention later in my contribution. 

But the NHS remains the only part of the public sector that has continued to increase staff numbers despite a decade of austerity, and that's a point that is difficult for other members of public services to recognise. Our colleagues in education, our colleagues right across local government recognise that health has been the big sector that has been invested in. But today's debate shows the appetite to further increase numbers is undiminished. To reach the levels we all wish to see across the UK will require significant and sustained investment from every UK nation, a different approach from whoever is the new UK Government to health and social care investment and, in particular, a different approach to recruitment from Europe and the scrapping of the nonsensical and damaging salary cap proposal, to have a real impact on our ability to recruit more staff.

Last week in my statement to the Chamber, I highlighted the positive interest generated by our 'Train. Work. Live.' campaign; there'll be more to come in 2020, which is the Year of the Nurse and Midwife. But, of course, we do need to do more to retain our skilled nursing workforce. That means providing service models that meet the expectations of our current and future workforce, an effective health and well-being offer, and flexible working options to provide a positive work-life balance, as a number of speakers have referred to. And I'm interested in what's being done both here in Wales and across the UK on doing just that. I want to see career and education opportunities, and ensure that NHS Wales is a great place to work.

So, our national workforce strategy being developed by Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and Social Care Wales will support the future sustainability of both the health and the social care workforce, in particular how we plan our workforce models for the future, identify the staff that are required with different professional groups and, importantly, how we support and develop our staff. So, I will be asking the NHS Wales partnership forum to consider together what further actions we could and should be taking both locally and nationally to support the retention of staff, including our nurses. That will consider current practice, including the best practice to spread that exists already in health boards and, of course, identifying best practice to introduce further flexible working.

I'll take the intervention before I finish.