In creating the NHS in 1948, Aneurin Bevan won an argument around the Cabinet table, against the likes of Herbert Morrison, that regional boards within the NHS had to be accountable to, and working under the direction of, a health Minister, otherwise it would not be a national health service, hence the famous apocryphal quote about dropped bedpans in Tredegar reverberating around the corridors of Whitehall.

Your argument yesterday that the decision as to whether to downgrade A&E services at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital is primarily a matter for clinicians not politicians is against the founding principles of the NHS, it's against the founding principles of this Senedd and it's even against the core values of your own party, which is why so many of your own Members are joining with Plaid Cymru and others in ignoring your advice to protest against these changes. Aren't the people of the Rhondda, the central Valleys and, indeed, the rest of Wales entitled to expect a First Minister who will intervene on their behalf, instead of simply saying, 'Nothing to do with me'?