Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:39 pm on 25 January 2023.
Thank you very much, Llywydd. A week ago, we were discussing a motion from Plaid Cymru calling for the declaration of a health crisis in Wales. Just as the Labour leader has described the situation in England as a crisis, and Labour in Scotland have described the situation as a crisis, we were eager to see Labour in Government in Wales recognise this crisis. The Labour Ministers rejected that a week ago, and the First Minister said again yesterday why he refused to use the term 'crisis'. Those are just words, according to him, and there's no value to them. Well, likewise, you could argue that declaring a climate emergency was just words. But words have value—there's a recognition of the gravity of the situation. It is a means of providing renewed focus, and I explained in that debate a week ago that we wanted the motion to be seen in a positive light, as a means of empowering Government.
Although they rejected that—and surely the Government needs to be empowered here—we're back today again proposing a positive motion. We have many roles as opposition parties. Our work is to hold Government to account, to assess how effective Government measures are—in this particular context, their efficiency in spending their budgets on health and care services, in developing policy, in supporting staff. That includes telling it as it is, and as constituents see it, even more importantly, and, necessarily, that will sometimes lead to conflict. But we on these benches do take our role of being proactive in putting alternative proposals on the table seriously, trying to influence the Government to move in a particular direction, not just outlining what we think is wrong with the direction that they've chosen.
In the context of a crisis in the health service, we, I think, all have to put our energy into finding solutions. And what we have before us today, published by Plaid Cymru this week, is a plan: a series of recommendations that we're asking the Welsh Government to implement. The risk is, of course, that the Government will say, 'Well, we're already doing all of this.' Well, sorry, but if the Welsh Government were operating effectively in these areas and were doing all of these things already, then a series of health professional bodies, royal colleges, staff representative bodies, would not have worked with us to draw up with this plan. They, like us, are entirely convinced that the Government is falling well short of what should be done. This is the product of collaboration.