Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:39 pm on 19 June 2018.

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Photo of Andrew RT Davies Andrew RT Davies Conservative 1:39, 19 June 2018

I thank you for that detailed answer, First Minister. Regrettably, 10,000 men a year die from prostate cancer—it's the biggest killer of men. And some universality around the screening programme must be a compunction on the Government because, actually, cancer doesn't rely on postcodes—it's universal, it is. On the bowel cancer screening programme that the Welsh Government have, it has been called, at the moment, a very postcode lottery-driven screening programme. In particular, one in four individuals were waiting in excess of eight weeks to have their screening procedure diagnosed, and actually put into practice if intervention was required. Nine hundred people a year die of bowel cancer here in Wales. If, ultimately, we had a better, more robust screening system and a wider screening system that actually took into account 40 years and above, then we could drive those numbers down even further. Given that we know the importance of screening and, in particular, bowel screening, what action is your Government taking to shorten the waiting times that will remove that one in four—25 per cent of people—waiting in excess of eight weeks to get the results that they require, because it cannot be right that, where the condition is treatable, just waiting too long on a waiting list has a detrimental impact on your outcome?