Llywydd, I completely reject the characterisation that the leader of the opposition has made, and he should know better. It is utterly irresponsible of him to misrepresent the advice not of the Welsh Government, but of the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Wales and the Chief Nursing Officer for Wales. I have their letter in front of me and it does not in any way bear out the accusations that the leader of the opposition has just made. It refers throughout to safe discharge. But, what it does is to say to the system that the system has to attend to the balance of risk across all of those people for whom it seeks to provide care. We have people, as he well knows and often puts to me on the floor of the Senedd, who are struggling to get access to the front door of this system, often people with very significant needs. At the other end of the system, prior to Christmas, we had 1,200 patients in a health service bed in Wales who were medically fit to be discharged. Now, what the letter from the deputy chief medical officer and the Chief Nursing Officer for Wales does is to say to health boards that they have to balance those risks. If there are patients in a hospital bed waiting for tests to be done, they could be safely discharged and called back in when those tests are available. It may be that not every element of a care package is in place, but the care package that is there is safe enough to allow discharge to take place. Instead of a culture of perfection around discharge, and the culture of crisis at the front door of a hospital, the letter seeks to rebalance that and to do it in a clinically responsible way.

That was good advice to the health service in Wales; you will find parallel advice being prepared in other parts of the United Kingdom. I support what the chief nursing officer and the deputy chief medical officer have said to the service, and I think it will result in better care for many patients, who otherwise—with very critical needs—find themselves waiting too long to get access to the front door of a hospital.