We’ve also made significant investments in urgent and emergency care this year, and if we hadn’t, the situation would be a great deal worse. Thanks to early investment made available in June, the Welsh ambulance service has been able to deliver a range of actions to increase capacity ahead of the winter. This includes recruitment of 100 additional front-line staff, who will be responding to calls within the next two weeks; new rota arrangements, which will equate to 72 whole-time equivalent staff; and new investment in triage and video consultation technology to support more confident decision making about whether a patient needs to be taken to hospital.

We have also invested in increasing capacity in urgent primary care centres and in expanding same-day emergency care services to provide people with alternatives to attending busy emergency departments, or admission to hospital. These interventions have supported around 7,000 people a month to access urgent care services away from the emergency department, and have helped to reduce and stabilise emergency admissions.

We know there is a lot more to do and there are no quick fixes. We share the public’s concern that our services remain under extreme and persistent strain. This is why we have established a five-year programme to transform urgent and emergency care services, which is supported by £25 million per annum, of which health boards received £3 million each in April. In addition to these interventions, and as the winter has progressed, we’ve issued further guidance to health boards through a revised local options framework similar to the approach we took at the peak of the COVID outbreak. We’ve also written to health board clinical leaders urging them to make every effort to keep people at home, and not to admit people to hospital unless absolutely necessary. Last week, we held a national discharge summit, and we have also asked clinical teams to return those in hospital to their homes or to an alternative place of safety as quickly as possible to help preserve our hospital capacity for those at greatest risk, and with the greatest chance of benefit.

We can expect the next few months to be really tough, but I really want to express my thanks and gratitude to staff for their continued efforts during what continues to be a really difficult time. Thanks also to families who have supported the discharge of their loved ones; this is going to really help us free up hospital beds for people who need the specialist care that only our hospitals can provide.

We’ve made extensive preparations for the winter, and whilst we have seen tremendous pressure over recent weeks, at levels we've never seen before, the actions that have been put in place have enabled us to broadly stabilise the position since the festive period. We’re now preparing for the next phase of pressure as children return to school and as life begins to go back to normal after the Christmas break, as well as changes in the weather, which we know often bring a new surge in the demand during this time of year. Thank you very much.