Thank you very much. I do urge you to support this amendment. Should we be able to expect, or should we hope to have, the clinical staff, the best possible doctors, nurses and so on, within the NHS? I think we should, and there are systems in place to ensure that standards are maintained. Should we expect and hope to have the best possible managers within the NHS? Yes, I would argue that we should, but we don't have the same systems in place to try to maintain those standards.

What this amendment does is to create a register of NHS managers and a body with oversight of that register. We have made some changes since Stage 2 proceedings in order to ensure that that oversight body does have the ability to put competencies in place and to place sanctions on managers who fail to reach certain standards.

In the case of nurses, doctors, midwives and other health professionals, there are regulatory bodies in place that insist on high standards, which have the ability to discipline staff if they fail to attain those standards, to put things right when standards are not attained, where there is negligence, and then it's possible to prosecute in accordance with those regulatory standards. But among managers, we don't have those arrangements in place that would ensure that we should insist on a particular standard. We have excellent managers within our health service in Wales, at all levels. We need to give those managers within the NHS pride. We need to celebrate good management. But if we do that on the one hand, then on the other hand we need to ensure that we have those tools in place and that we have systems that provide a yardstick, where we can say, 'Yes, this is the expected standard.'

As we know, we have had too many experiences within the NHS in Wales over the years where managers have fallen way below the standards that we should expect of them. There are grave implications where managerial errors and mistakes have been made. And very often, we will see a manager moved on and taking another role in a health board without there having been processes followed, either to correct, to penalise or to bring sanctions into play, but mainly in order to improve standards.

I understand that some preparation has been made in terms of the kind of system that we are suggesting here, and that this is something that the Government realises should be addressed, but, for some reason, there is an unwillingness, or there has been an unwillingness, to say, 'Well, that's enough of a throwaway attitude towards standards among managers—let us do something to correct the situation.'

I don't think that we can drive standards up to do more with less, and to use resources far more efficiently, unless we have a mechanism in place to improve management. Although the Government will reject this amendment, I fear, I do truly believe that this is an area where the Government should be focusing on, and that this should have been a core part of the Bill, if the purpose of that Bill was to raise standards within health and care.