Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to David Rees for tabling this short debate.

I welcome the work of the cross-party group and its report that was published last week. The report sets out the challenges facing cancer care and outcomes in the context of the pandemic. I'm pleased to see that there's much commonality between the recommendations of the report and our own intentions for cancer services. For instance, last week, we resumed reporting of the single cancer pathway, as called for in the report and as mentioned by David Rees in his debate introduction.

The commitments that we set out in 2013 and 2017 in our cancer delivery plans to improve cancer services and outcomes still stand today. We are not stepping back from that commitment. Our new approach will be published by March, given the impact of the pandemic. A significant amount of progress has been made in recent years, and I'd like to highlight the steady improvement in outcomes. Again, David Rees acknowledged that there has been an improvement in outcomes here in Wales. There are very high levels of positive patient experience. We have the introduction of the UK's first single cancer pathway and the emergence of rapid diagnostic centres. But there remains much more to do. The scale of the challenge and complexity of the changes that we need are significant.

In normal years, we diagnose around 19,000 new cases in Wales, more than 450,000 people are screened, and we investigate more than 120,000 suspected cancer referrals. We rely on our primary care providers to identify symptoms; our radiology, endoscopy and pathology services to diagnose; our surgical, radiotherapy and chemotherapy teams to treat the disease; and our specialist nurse palliative care teams and third sector partners to support and care for people during the most difficult time in their lives.