Last week we received the news that the dreaded south Wales programme is being resurrected after six years, in terms of accident and emergency configuration. This means consultant-led services are recommended for removal from the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Llantrisant. During the same briefing, we were told that the Royal Glamorgan has the busiest A&E of the three district general hospitals under Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board.

The A&E department will lose its last consultant at the end of March; then it will be entirely reliant on locum consultants. In contrast, the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend has eight consultants in A&E, and the Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr has the equivalent of four and a half consultants in A&E. Many people are questioning how and why this disparity has been allowed to develop. People are also questioning whether they will be able to get to hospital in time in an emergency. I've heard from people this week who say they would have died, or even worse—that their child would have died—had they been forced to travel further afield than the Royal Glamorgan Hospital.

A survey from a few years ago found that fewer than half of people questioned in Wales knew that health is devolved. Therefore, many people do not know that Labour runs the NHS in Wales, and has done so since the beginning of devolution in 1999. As you have responsibility for health in Wales, and you are a member of the political party that has run health in Wales for decades, what can you say to the people in the Rhondda who believe that this decision will cost lives? Will you take responsibility for it, and how do you justify making people travel further in a life-threatening situation?