My mother worked as a nurse through the 1980s. She faced cutbacks in spending under Thatcher and had to see patients suffering as a result.

It’s fair to say she wasn’t Maggie’s biggest fan.

So I never thought I’d hear her say how glad she was to be a nurse then and not now, but she has.

The NHS is under huge strain throughout the UK, not just in Wales, so I don’t agree with those who seek to blame the Welsh Government.

Yet neither do I agree with those who claim the NHS model is broken – it’s not.

The NHS system is worth fighting for – care free at the point of use and available to all regardless of means. The fact the people in Britain are not regularly financially crippled by medical bills is not something we should take for granted.

But our NHS is being undermined and endangered by a UK government who won’t fund it properly and which refuses to tackle the other two root causes of the situation, recruitment and the state of social care.

On recruitment, we simply must train more medical and health and care staff, and give them a fair wage which reflects the value of what they do and which retains them within the NHS. The basics of macro-economics mean this can only be done at a UK level.

But there is no solution to the current pressures facing our NHS without solving the issue of social care. Without social care, people are left stuck in hospitals because they can’t get the support they need to live independently. So hospitals are unable to take in those who need medical care and become over-full.

At the moment, the social care system is fragmented and characterised by low wages. Staff are frustrated, pushed towards poverty themselves.

Often they leave for jobs in retail or hospitality that pay the same or more and are maybe less stressful, if perhaps less rewarding, than care work. What does it say about our society when we pay people who care for our most vulnerable people so little?

Instead, we could have a National Care Service that provided staff with more opportunity for career progression, and better levels of pay.

In Gwent we’re looking at what we can do to improve the situation, but something needs to change more widely too.

So I’d like to say a huge thank you to all those who work in our health system – to the NHS workers and those who work in social care. I know how overstretched you are.

Despite all the challenges, you make a huge difference to peoples’ lives, helping people recover from illness or injury, enabling people to live more independently and transforming the quality of life enjoyed by some of our most vulnerable residents.

That’s a difference that you make and which all of us in power should remember.