Before the pandemic, mental health services were struggling with a backlog of inquiries. Wales had the third highest rate out of English and Welsh regions for female suicide and the fourth highest rate for male suicide. And this is the problem, Minister; we have a health service in Wales that was already underfunded and struggling before COVID hit. 

During this Welsh Parliament term, five of the seven health boards have been under some kind of Government intervention, and Betsi, despite your recent announcement, is still struggling to show signs of real, long-term, sustainable improvement. And there were other areas over the past five years where you've promised much but failed to deliver, such as a mother and baby unit for south Wales and a gender identity clinic for Wales. So, we're calling on your Government to urgently publish a recovery plan for the Welsh NHS. It must include three key commitments: clear the backlog in treatment and ensure that no-one has to wait more than one year for treatment, going forward; recruit at least 1,200 doctors and 2,000 nurses to reduce waiting times; and transform mental health by treating it with the same urgency as physical health.

I am not convinced you can deliver this. The Welsh health service now needs new leadership, and I'm delighted with the plans that my party, the Welsh Conservatives, have to take things forward. A Welsh Conservative Government would have a COVID-19 management plan, which would appoint a dedicated COVID-19 recovery Minister in the Welsh Government to oversee all areas of coronavirus recovery, including the vaccine roll-out. We would support people experiencing the long-term effects of COVID-19 by establishing clinics dedicated to treating long COVID. We would urgently establish routes to support for people suffering with mental health problems from the pandemic, especially NHS staff and care workers, because they've been providing palliative care, and those who suffered bereavement who were not able to say goodbye to loved ones. We will address the chronic deterioration in waiting times over the last 12 months and begin to ease the recruitment crisis in the Welsh health service with our 'recruit, retain, retrain' policy. For too long, mental health services have also been the poor relation, and it is time that mental well-being was given the same prominence as physical health.

Minister, we want to build back better, we want to provide the Welsh NHS with the support that it needs and we don't want more of the same. I look forward to hearing the contributions to this debate today. I would urge Members of this Senedd to back this motion. Thank you.