Thank you very much, Deputy Llywydd, and thank you very much for your statement this afternoon, Deputy Minister. I also welcome the age-friendly Wales strategy—I mean, what's not to like with it really—apart from the fact that we have yet another aspirational strategy with very little detail on how we will achieve that strategy or targets to measure our progress against. When will we see an action plan and deliverable targets? We should have an age-friendly Wales today, not in some yet-to-be-decided timescale. Older people in Wales, the very ones who helped inform your strategy, need action now, not yet more committees, ministerial panels or focus groups.

In the weeks following the publication of your document, Deputy Minister, the Welsh Government have continued to pursue age-unfriendly policies. You introduced vaccine passports for theatres and cinemas, yet older people struggle to get through on the line established to supply paper passes to those who don't have a smartphone. Yesterday, your Government announced that, from today, it would add the booster jab status to the vaccine passports, but older people wishing to travel overseas to visit loved ones over Christmas are out of luck because the status won't be added to paper passes until some time in January. Is this an age-friendly Welsh Government?

Why then do older people spend much longer in our A&E departments? The average waiting time in A&E for those over the age of 85 is seven hours and 47 minutes—almost double the target wait. Deputy Minister, you say that your strategy is informed by the United Nations' principles for older persons, but you have refused to support my calls to enshrine these principles in a rights-based approach to services for older people in Wales, so you can't say one thing and then vote against it in practice.

In the next 10 to 15 years, the number of people over the age of 65 who struggle with day-to-day activities is set to grow by over a third. Do you believe that your Government can deliver a health and care service that can meet this growing need? Deputy Minister, when it comes to health and care in Wales, we should be spending around £1.18 for every pound spent in England to meet the added needs of our older population, yet recent figures from Audit Wales show that spending is around £1.05. Will you be urging the finance Minister to massively increase health and care spending in order to meet the objectives set out in your strategy?

Deputy Minister, the key underpinnings of your ageing strategy is to enable older people to participate and make their voices heard. Our older population has felt the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic more keenly than any other segment of our community. Do you therefore agree with my party—and now the older people's commissioner—that we need a Wales-specific public inquiry into the handling of this pandemic? Mrs Herklots says, and I quote,

'Holding a Wales-specific Public Inquiry will ensure that the Chair and the panel running the Inquiry understand devolution and the cultural and political distinctiveness of Wales, as well as being representative of the diversity of our nation and accessible in a way that a UK-wide Inquiry may not be able to achieve.'

She goes on to say,

'This will be crucially important if we are to hear directly from older people and their loved ones, many of whom will have lost someone, and give them the opportunity for their stories to be heard. Enabling people to share their experiences and have their voices heard will be a fundamental part of an Inquiry, and will be part of our collective recovery from this most devastating period.'

Do you support this view, Deputy Minister, and do you agree that not holding a Wales-specific COVID inquiry risks missing potential opportunities to make our health and care services more resilient and sustainable? Deputy Minister, I look forward to seeing your delivery plan and I support your aspirations, but we have to ensure that they become more than that. Older people in Wales need more than warm words. Thank you.