Visiting hospitals, visiting picket lines, and speaking to NHS workers, they describe a system in crisis that is stopping them from being able to do their job to the best of their ability. They know that people are dying that they could save, and that is taking a toll on their health and well-being, meaning that retention is increasingly becoming a concern. That's why this is the second step of our five-point plan, to focus specifically on the workforce.

I have to address some of the things that were raised by the First Minister yesterday. Of course the NHS is doing fantastic work each day, but if we're speaking to staff and they say there's a crisis, then I am angry that there wasn't that acknowledgement. But they don't just want us to acknowledge there's a crisis; they want to see action taken. That's the purpose of this five-point plan. If we were accused of scaremongering or trying to create drama in politics with our calls last week to acknowledge the crisis, that wasn't the point of it. The point was to acknowledge the truth that everybody knows that our NHS is in crisis and we must take action if we truly value it.

Whilst pay is, of course, important in terms of retention, this isn't the only element that needs to be addressed. We need to recruit, retain, redesign and retrain the health and care workforce. The implementation of these four Rs will ensure the establishment of a resilient health and care workforce. We need a costed workforce plan that sets out a range of short, medium and long-term solutions to grow, train and retain the workforce, underpinned by the necessary funding and based on the latest vacancy data and projected patient demand. Last November, 36 organisations from across health and social care, including royal colleges, charities, patient groups and professional bodies, came together to sign a joint letter to the First Minister, calling on the Welsh Government to publish the long-awaited national workforce implementation plan for health and care.

The impact of workforce shortages on patient care cannot be underestimated, as waiting times reached record levels in Wales. Cancer lists and ambulance performance times are currently the worst on record, and overall waiting list numbers passed 750,000 for the first time in October 2022. Yet with little to no reliable up-to-date workforce data, no national implementation plan for recruitment and retention, no consistent approach to the collection of accurate vacancy data collated across health boards and trusts, and no transparency on staffing shortages and rota gaps, no method of comparing the lessons learnt on recruitment and retention, and no way of knowing when we will finally receive answers from the Welsh Government, we simply are uninformed about the scale of the workforce crisis. But the responses we have received from a number of healthcare organisations highlight that there is a clear staffing crisis, and we need a clear delivery strategy with targets and full costing for a new workforce plan.

The Royal College of Midwives stated that we could only drive improvement in maternity care if there are enough midwives working in the NHS in every part of Wales. The Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians have called for a renewed emphasis on workforce. The British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners are calling for the introduction of incentives for existing doctors and GPs to remain in the health service. The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Nursing are calling for a retention strategy. The Welsh Government must reform centralised data collection so that staffing needs can be identified earlier. In addition to expanding and establishing improved pathways to continued professional development, this will ensure that health workers can work at the top of their competence whilst retaining within the NHS.

We also note that the Welsh Government have spent £260 million on agency staff in the past year, and this is haemorrhaging the sustainability of our NHS. I was told in a local hospital that I visited in my region that staff were being blocked from appointing to that department and, instead, were regularly calling in agency staff. And some of those agency staff would willingly take on contracts. But that's what I was told, and they were angry because they saw that as wasted money—the fact that they had agency staff willing to take on contracts but were being blocked. This has to be looked at, because the over-reliance on agency staff is a symptom of the Welsh Government's mismanagement of the NHS in Wales. Yes, we'll always need ways of bringing in staff for additional shifts, but profit must be removed from agency working, and we can't face a situation when we aren't seeing people being appointed into the roles when there are shortages and then only reliance on agency staff. We need to see action. This is a plan. I am urging Welsh Government to get behind it, acknowledge there's a crisis, then we can find solutions to save our NHS.