There are two points, Llywydd. First of all, I don’t need to rely on FOI figures, because we have the official figures that are published every year on workforce, and in the first 20 years of devolution, we saw a 31 per cent increase in the number of GPs working in Wales, a 44 per cent increase in the number of nurses working in the NHS in Wales, a 92 per cent increase in the number of medical and dental staff, a 98 per cent increase in the scientific, therapeutic and technical staff, and a 152 per cent increase in the number of people working in the Welsh ambulance service. Those are the figures that I rely on, and they show a massive growth over 20 years in the medical, clinical workforce available here in Wales.

Actually, I think it’s a cheap shot, Llywydd, to refer to people who are supporting those people as simply bureaucrats. When those additional oncology clinicians become available, how does the Member think that they get to see the patients who come to see them every day? When a doctor turns up at the Heath hospital to carry out five cataract operations in a morning, how does he think those five patients and their notes and everything that is needed for those operations to be carried out—? Does he think it would be a good idea to ask doctors to do all of that? No. Those are the bureaucrats that he refers to. 

When you have an expansion in the number of front-line clinicians in the health service at the extent that we have, of course they need people to support them in the work that they do. No doubt his bureaucrats include the people that the Welsh Government has now funded to pursue Welsh language services in each of our health boards. Does he think it would be a good idea to take them out of the figures? One person’s bureaucrat is another's person providing and supporting an essential service, and that’s what we see in the figures that he has outlined this afternoon.