Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:43 pm on 29 January 2020.
I think you heard my speech earlier when I said that I think the programme is now out of date and there should be a review of that programme before any further proposals are actually considered. I was absolutely clear in the things that I said earlier, which were things that I said very many years earlier when we effectively saved the accident and emergency in the Royal Glamorgan.
But what you cannot get away from is that 10 years of Tory austerity have deprived us of enormous sums of funding: £4 billion. And then when we talk also—[Interruption.] When we also talk about the impact on local government services—I know they don't like to hear these figures—in England, social services have been cut in real terms by 25 per cent; in Wales, they've been cut by 8 per cent. This is the consequence of Tory austerity. In any assessment of performance, you have to look at the environment that we're in and there is absolutely no doubt that Tory austerity has been one of the major contributions to the ability to deal with the pressures the NHS has in England and in Wales as well.