Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to have an opportunity to respond to this motion. It's a motion that we in Plaid Cymru agree with in general terms. I disagree with the wording in certain areas—COVID-lite areas rather than COVID-free are what the Royal College of Surgeons is calling for, and it's an important issue. We certainly agree with the underlying intention of the motion in general terms. We will be voting against the original motion to allow a vote on our own amendment, of course.

Long before the pandemic, we were concerned about lengthy waiting lists. As health spokesperson, it has been one of the hot topics of the past few years. As a constituency representative, I know of I don't know how many constituents who have been told that they will have to wait for way over 12 months for urgent treatment. It will be an experience common to each and every one of us in this Senedd, I'm sure.

The impact on patients is great—not only the direct impact of having to live with illness, often in pain or in discomfort, with the anxiety that the long waiting time is actually making things worse and that the treatment will ultimately be less successful—but also because the waiting itself leads to problems. We had a valuable report from the health councils back in 2018, 'Our lives on hold', looking at the impact of waiting times on quality of life. The title said it all, if truth be told. We are talking about the impact of the waiting, not only on physical health, but also on mental health, on isolation, on mobility, on the loss of dignity and the impact on family life, where older people have childcare responsibilities and can't undertake those responsibilities.

In that respect, I think that the Government has been a little disingenuous in its amendments. The Government needs to recognise that waiting times in Wales were far too long before this crisis. They shouldn't, in any way, try to avoid the reality of the situation—that performance against waiting time targets has been a long-term problem. But, the pandemic, of course, has exacerbated the situation. For many people who had been waiting before the beginning of this troubled year, things came to a stop. When some elective treatments restarted, we heard concerns of inconsistencies across Wales in terms of access to surgical services.

But, do bear in mind that it's not just waiting times for treatment that have been recognised as a problem. We have also seen great delays—and the complete suspension at times—in the diagnostic services that are so crucially important. In addition to that, of course, many people have chosen not to seek medical assistance because of nervousness about catching the virus or because they don't want to be a burden on our health service at a time of crisis.

The upshot of all of this? We have heard cancer organisations such as Macmillan tell us that they think that up to 3,000 people in Wales could be living with undiagnosed cancer because of the impact of coronavirus. So, it is crucial that the Welsh Government does look at how they deal with the backlogs in the system, and deal with the fact that many people feel that they have been forgotten. It's important not only for the sake of the patients, but also for our committed staff, and we once again have an opportunity to thank them for their service.

We need the COVID-lite sites as a matter of urgency, with regular testing for staff and patients and sufficient stocks of PPE to keep the elective capacity going through the crucial next few months. I use the term 'COVID-lite' deliberately, rather than 'COVID-free', as the Royal College of Surgeons does, because in reality you can give no guarantee that you can eradicate the virus entirely from sites. Regular testing is crucial in order to maintain surgical services, workforce planning, and safeguarding the COVID-lite sites is important. Staff must be tested regularly, even when they are asymptomatic.

We have tabled our amendment in the spirit of making progress, and in passing that, as I've suggested, we will be supporting the motion itself. We do think that we need a review of performance targets—