It's a pleasure to take part in this debate this afternoon, and I've got no problem supporting the motion as it stands this afternoon. 

According to the World Health Organization, there is ample evidence that social factors such as education, employment status, income level and gender and ethnicity have a marked influence on how healthy a person is. In all countries, whether low, middle or high income, there are wide disparities in the health status of different social groups. The lower a person's socioeconomic position, the higher their risk of poor health.

Sadly, there is ample evidence of this in my own constituency. The Vale of Clwyd is home to some of the poorest wards in Wales, if not the entire United Kingdom. It has one of the lowest life expectancy rates for men, one of the highest rates of premature death from non-communicable disease, and there are incredibly high rates of cardiovascular deaths as well as high prevalence of diabetes. One out of every 16 adults is on long-term sickness or disabled and economically inactive.

Economic inactivity amongst those not battling long-term illness isn't much better. Nearly a quarter of the adult population are economically inactive, so it's little wonder that health inequalities are so prevalent. Governments are supposed to ensure that their citizens are healthy, supposed to lift them from poverty, supposed to improve their life chances, and this Welsh Government has failed on all counts. It's been Welsh Labour, propped up by Plaid Cymru and/or the Liberal Democrats, that have run Wales for over two decades. And during that time, our economy has remained stagnant. 

In my constituency, gross value added has increased. It has gone from 59.8 per cent of UK GVA to 60.2 per cent—not even half of 1 per cent in over 20 years. So, it's little more than a statistical rounding error. While our economy remained flat, my constituents got poorer and, as a result, sicker. Many of my constituents can't afford to eat healthily. One in five adults are likely to have not eaten their recommended five a day, and it's not surprising therefore that the number of people waiting for hospital treatment has doubled in the last decade. Health spending has also doubled during that time. We now spend over half the Welsh budget on health and care, so what happened to treating the disease and not the symptoms? If the Welsh Government focused on removing health inequalities, we would not need to spend ever-increasing amounts on the NHS. We have to ensure our population has access to well-paying jobs and good-quality housing if we are to have any hope of tackling long-term sickness. 

There have been so many wasted opportunities to tackle this issue. The Welsh Government promised to raise the GVA of Wales to within 10 per cent of the UK average, and then dropped their pledge before it was broken. They wasted structural funds on vanity projects. And I can only hope, for the sake of my constituents, that they will take a leaf from the UK Government's book and the levelling-up agenda, as my constituents are already benefitting from multiple schemes. But this is not a competition between nations. The Welsh Government has to put aside party politics and petty nationalism and work with the Governments across the UK to raise our citizens out of poverty and tackle health inequalities head-on and for good. Diolch.