It's a pleasure to take part in our debate this afternoon. I would like to put on record my thanks to all the community pharmacists for the amazing work they did and continue to do during the pandemic and beyond. The arrival of COVID on these shores exacerbated the issues that have been facing primary care for years. We simply haven't been training enough GPs to meet the health and care needs of Wales. Thankfully, pharmacists have been able to fill the gap in taking pressure off not only primary care but also secondary care, and pharmacists across Wales are able to deal with common ailments and queries about prescription medication. And, thanks to the Choose Well campaign, more and more people are aware of the role pharmacists play in the nation's healthcare.

Our excellent community pharmacies save tens of thousands of GP appointments each week and divert thousands from the doors of our accident and emergency and minor injury departments. They have also played a crucial role in dealing with COVID-19. Not only have they provided vital supplies of COVID tests, masks and sanitisers, but many have also helped with the roll-out of vaccines. During the summer, I had the pleasure of visiting Rowlands Pharmacy in my hometown of Prestatyn. Rowlands, in addition to their usual services, also doubled up as a vaccination centre for the community, building upon their considerable expertise in delivering the annual flu jab. They helped ensure Prestatyn residents got their COVID vaccination, and I have no doubt they will play a key role in delivering future COVID boosters, as it's highly likely we will need annual jabs. 

Sadly, the strain on primary care will continue to bite, due in no small part to an ageing workforce. The demands on our community pharmacies will continue to rise. However, our pharmacies are facing their own workforce issues. In my local health board alone, Betsi Cadwaladr, there are over 152 full-time equivalent vaccines—vacancies. I got my vaccines and vacancies mixed up there. [Laughter.] That equates to one vacancy per pharmacy across north Wales. The pressure this is placing staff under is immense, and according to the industry bodies, around 90 per cent of staff are at risk of burnout. The Welsh Government must give greater priority to the training and recruitment of community pharmacists. They must also tackle barriers to smarter working. A move to e-prescribing, which has been mentioned a few times during this debate so far, in three to five years is simply not good enough, particularly when we've got GPs still using paper prescription pads and fax machines, as the Member for Dwyfor Meirionydd rightly said, in the national health service.

Most of the other UK nations dropped this archaic prescription pad in favour of electronic prescriptions over a decade ago, and there's even reference to e-prescribing coming in as far back as the 1990s in Denmark. It goes to show how we are falling behind in that sense. A Birmingham NHS trust has just completed the roll-out of their second generation electronic prescribing and medications administration software. Built on cloud technology, it grants patients and healthcare professionals easy and secure access to patient and medication records. The trust covers a similar population to Wales, and they're already moving their e-prescription service to the cloud, but ours still remains a pipe dream in Wales. We're small enough to be agile, as well, but as with everything in the public sector, it's overcomplicated by red tape, bureaucracy and a silo mentality. We only have to look at the roll-out of the 111 service to get an idea of how badly we need to perform in modernising our healthcare. If we truly value our community pharmacy services and patient care, we have to get a grip on this issue right now.