I thank the Conservatives for bringing this debate today. As Members who were present in the last Senedd know, I rarely spoke in health debates. Fortunately, for the first time since I was elected, we have a health Minister who I am confident will address the problems.

I also recognise the hard work and dedication of the Welsh ambulance staff in very, very challenging circumstances. I also accept the immense pressure the Welsh ambulance service is under, with increasing transfer-of-care times. I, like many Members, have been contacted by angry relatives when ambulances have failed to attend. One constituent with a suspected heart attack was told to get a taxi. Another constituent, at a pub quiz, had a suspected stroke. There was no ambulance available; the pub landlady took him to A&E. I mean, is it bad luck that the two health providers that have provided the worst service over several years are the Welsh ambulance service and Betsi Cadwaladr, which are, geographically, the two biggest direct providers?

Providing more ambulances or getting the army involved, as proposed, what that will do is increase the number of patients waiting outside. I mean, you then have five more ambulances, you have five more ambulances waiting outside. The visible bottleneck in the system is A&E, and ambulances queuing outside is a symptom of this, not the cause.

Too many people go to A&E when their medical need is neither an accident or an emergency. Why do they do this? Because it's the only place you can guarantee to see a doctor. So, after several days of failing to see their GP, patients go to A&E for the long queue, but knowing at the end of that long queue, a doctor will see them. Also, doctors in A&E are risk averse, and rather than sending patients home and telling them to seek medical help if they get worse, they keep them in for 24 hours of observation. One of the problems with beds being used up is that people are being kept in, observed and released. How many patients have actually spent 24 hours in observation and then been sent home?

A proposal I put privately to the Minister previously is out-of-hours GPs being installed in every A&E department to help the—