We’ve set out clearly our expectations for improvement in the cancer delivery plan. There’s no dispute within the wide range of healthcare professionals in tertiary, secondary and primary care services of the need for improvement, or in the real value of having written care plans. It is indeed because people see the whole person, so not just the particular direct impact of cancer in treatment terms, but what that means for that person—their ability to work, their ability to live their life, to make different choices and, actually their prospects for the future. So, it is really important to have that wider discussion and to understand that it will be at different points in time for different people. Some people, at the point of diagnosis, may want to know everything. Other people may want to get out of the room as soon as possible. It’s understandable why that happens, and that’s why a service cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s about being more agile and for it to be wrapped around that person. It also reiterates the need to have not just primary care and hospital-based care in a proper and constructive relationship with each other, but actually the real value of people in the third sector being able to support people in a different way, in a non-medicalised setting.

But I do think that it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that more people are being referred for cancer, more people are being treated for cancer, more people are treated in time for cancer, and more people have better outcomes. More people survive now than ever before, and, actually, on the experience of care, 93 per cent of people have a good experience of cancer care here in Wales. So, more improvement required, I accept that completely, but let’s not try and say that everything is bad here. We have many things to be very proud of.