We have these heart-searching sessions so often because of extraordinary pressures on the health service, but that indicates that the extraordinary pressures have in some ways become routine and that's the systemic problem that we've got here. Operations have been cancelled now for the third consecutive day in Hywel Dda and people might be forgiven, therefore, for thinking we should change the name of the health board to Hywel Ddim Mor Dda—you know, Hywel Not So Good, as a health board.

Nobody questions, I think—I certainly don't—the commitment of the staff and the management in Hywel Dda to make things better, and they've been working very, very hard since the change of regime to improve things and have met with a great deal of success, I think. There is obviously still a long way to go, but there is a systemic problem, not just in Hywel Dda. Figures published last month showed accident and emergency performance at hospitals throughout Wales was at a record low for the third month running and the Welsh ambulance service failed to meet its response time target for the first time in four years.

Dr Banfield, who's been mentioned several times in this session this afternoon, has said that there isn't one person to blame for this. He said this is an issue within the system. And he says:

'We're hearing reports of cancer surgery now being cancelled as well throughout different hospitals in Wales.'

I hear what the Minister said about the beds question a moment ago, but, again, Dr Banfield does make what I think is the elementary point, that surgical beds are full of medical patients and that puts the wrong type of patient in the wrong hospital bed at the wrong time and they're clearly not getting the care that they should do.

Nobody expects anybody in the health service to have perfect foresight and things will go wrong, often for adventitious reasons that nobody could have predicted, so we have to be reasonable about this. But, as Helen Mary Jones said right from the start, we do know that winter takes place every year and that there are extraordinary pressures that are likely to hit, and I heard the First Minister yesterday saying, 'Well, we knew this was coming anyway. That's why we didn't have operations planned for last week.' Well, in which case, surely we could have perhaps been a little more accurate in our predictions as to the kind of pressures that would be added on top of what was in the system anyway.

The Minister comes here so regularly now he just has a sort of look of resignation on his face at the points that we all have to make. And if he were in our position he'd be making them in the same way that we have, I have absolutely no doubt. Again, I don't doubt his commitment to improving the health service in Wales at all, but something has to be done.

More money somehow has to be provided as well as some sort of improvements at the micro level within each of the health boards that is suffering from these kinds of systemic problems. Hywel Dda has been in a difficult position, it has been making improvements, but clearly there's a long way yet to go. I hope that the Minister will do his best to ensure that Hywel Dda is given the resources that it needs to cope with the pressures that it has been enduring.