Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. The people of Wales deserve health services that deliver the best possible outcomes for patients. We will be guided by the best and most up-to-date clinical evidence to deliver that high-quality care. Today’s debate is a subject that we’ve discussed on numerous occasions and I therefore make no apologies to Members that they will hear again why services must change. We need improvements if we are to provide health services that the people of Wales deserve. That was the conclusion of the Parliamentary review of health and social care. The review clearly advocated the need for a revolution in our health and care system to meet future demands, and I’d like to remind the Conservatives about the previous debate, the one before this, where they were asking for radical transformation: the parties in this Senedd signed up to those recommendations, and let me tell you that west Wales has not been forgotten. If plans to develop a new hospital were to proceed, this would represent the largest public sector investment ever to happen in west Wales, delivering a brand-new, cleaner, greener facility, and massive opportunities for local people, and I know on which side of that debate I would want to be. Hywel Dda University Health Board is responsible for the provision of safe, sustainable, high-quality healthcare for its local population, including acute and emergency services. It’s been consulting on a range of proposals as part of its 20-year health strategy. The Welsh Government is currently scrutinising their programme business case and no decisions have yet been made.

The health board continues to make it absolutely clear that duplication of services across its sites leads to fragility. Multiple sites cannot sustain the necessary expertise nor the scale needed to provide optimum 24/7 care. And as someone who is based in St David's with a 90-year-old mother, I know that I would rather travel an extra few miles to see an expert quicker than spending hours on end in A&E, as is currently the case. The health board’s programme for transformation has been designed by clinicians specifically to ensure proposals are safe for patients. The health board reached this current proposal after what was regarded as an exemplar engagement process with many communities over many months. Now, the proposal to build a new hospital that will have state-of-the-art emergency-care facilities is intended to improve standards of care. The proposal means that it will be possible to have timely access to decision makers at a senior level who can assess patients, and it’ll also lead to an improvement in terms of training opportunities for our professional staff, and attracting staff, when we’ve got an ageing workforce, is going to be difficult. And let’s just be honest about how difficult it is at the moment to attract people.