I want to focus on one element of the motion: e-prescribing. Arguing about IT systems within the health service is one of those anachronistic things, isn't it? The health sector breaks new ground on almost a daily basis with technology, but the IT systems are still in the last quarter of the last century. Some surgeries are still reliant on fax machines. If I was to talk about faxes to my children, they'd have no idea what I was on about. Indeed, they'd tell me off for swearing, probably.

Laura Anne Jones mentioned earlier that England and Scotland introduced e-prescribing 10 years ago. Denmark started e-prescribing back in the 1990s. The first e-prescription was sent in Sweden in 1983, and a number of other nations operate e-prescribing successfully.

I want to pay tribute at this point to the excellent work that pharmacists on the Llŷn peninsula do in Dwyfor Meirionnydd. Fferyllwyr Llŷn have prepared the ground many times. We heard recently about the prescription lockers that have been introduced by Fferyllwyr Llŷn. They broke new ground by providing prescriptions for illnesses themselves, taking great pressure off surgeries and releasing them to focus on more serious cases. And, of course, Fferyllwyr Llŷn were the first providers to provide COVID vaccinations. There's a saying in English that necessity is the mother of invention, and that is certainly true of rural communities. And our rural communities have often had to find alternative and better ways of operating, as we have seen with Fferyllwyr Llŷn.

In the same way, the D Powys Davies Pharmacy in Blaenau Ffestiniog, part of Fferyllwyr Llŷn, has started the process of digitising prescriptions, showing that that internal process makes things smoother for the patient and better for the pharmacy too. But it’s also led to fewer errors when patients collect their medicines and better quality control. This is central to the demand for e-prescribing. Indeed, according to research from the University of Oxford, 17 per cent of hospital visits occur as a result of errors in medicine, and around half of them are avoidable. The argument, therefore, for safeguarding people’s health by providing e-prescriptions is clear, but we need a central system in order to make the most of the technology available to us.

COVID and the social changes that we have seen as a result of the COVID—. Therefore it’s about time that we saw the transfer of prescribing to the digital realm as people work from home, including GPs, and they can’t necessarily work from home at the moment. Or if you go on holiday, you could pick up a prescription in another city without having to go to your home pharmacy. Consider us here today. I've had to travel down from north Wales to Cardiff. If I needed to collect an asthma pump, I could do that in Cardiff without having to travel back home. So, there are clear benefits.

I want to conclude with one word of warning. We’ve already heard that there is hope of having e-prescribing within the next three to five years, which is to be welcomed—I’m sure that the Minister will expand on this—but to do it properly, we need to ensure that you do it in full co-operation with community pharmacies. There is a risk, of course, that this could push more and more pharmacies online and that as we see more e-prescribing, online pharmacists will benefit from it. This would not only be a risk to the viability of community pharmacies, but this would also break the personal link, which is so often necessary, as pharmacists know most of the patients and customers in their community, and that link will continue to be important for the future. So, in developing these new systems, you must do that in full collaboration with community pharmacies, ensuring that they will continue to be central to the process of distributing medicines. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in terms of what consultation she has held with community pharmacies in ensuring that they are central to that process. Thank you.