It's a pleasure to take part in this debate this afternoon on a subject I'm fairly passionate about, with my experience in the NHS. As mentioned earlier in the debate, the UK Conservative Government has provided Wales with £1.2 billion in Barnett consequentials after announcements made in last week's autumn statement, and that's in direct contradiction to the health Minister's claims that her funding would be cut. The Labour Government only has to look at themselves for the blame, and the health Minister should be putting that case to her Cabinet. I'll give you a few examples of some of the money that's been wasted by the Welsh Government that could be, arguably, ploughed into nurses and front-line NHS workers. So, £66.2 million on loans to prop up Cardiff Airport; £110 million on overspends and delays to the A465 Heads of the Valleys road; £157 million on the M4 relief road, which never got built; £14 million on the Llanbedr bypass in Gwynedd, which was halted when Lee Waters decided to halt road building; £4.25 million on Gilestone Farm in Powys; and £20 million on the universal basic income pilot. Let's not forget, as Russell George mentioned as well, that the Labour Party are very happy to spend £100 million on potentially 36 new Members of the Senedd, which would equate to around 4,000 newly qualified nurses, as Russell George also mentioned. The Royal College of Nursing Cymru has estimated that vacancy rates have almost doubled in the last year, with 2,900 vacancies in the nursing workforce compared with 1,719 in 2021. Wales is indeed the only country in the UK not to fully publish its vacancy data.

Just to briefly outline why I'm passionate about nursing staff levels and nurses getting a fair pay deal, obviously, it's because I worked for Betsi Cadwaladr and the NHS for 11 years, and I worked very closely with nurses across a very broad range of disciplines. It's really non-exhaustive what nurses do. They cover so many different areas—general health, mental health, the prison service. The list is endless. They specialise in other areas, so the skill set of nurses is very wide. Let's not forget as well that they have to indeed make a lot of sacrifices in order to qualify as nurses. Let's not forget that it's three years of education in university, £9,000 a year tuition fees, so you're looking at about £27,000-worth of debt before they've even started their careers. And their list of duties is non-exhaustive. They work 12-hour shifts, they work nights, they work weekends, they work all the unsociable hours—Christmas Day, you name it. So, they certainly put a shift in, to coin a phrase, and they're very hard-working and have a lot of responsibility for the public's health, and I think that should be fairly rewarded within the NHS service.

So, I'll just conclude by urging the Minister to get around the table with the RCN to thrash a deal out and prevent nurses' strike action, particularly as well as we're heading into winter—well, we are in winter; we're not heading into winter, we are here. We obviously know the consequential pressures of the winter, so, timing-wise, it's not the best time of year if strikes were to happen. So, please, Minister, please take some responsibility, get around the table with the RCN and let's do a deal. Thank you.