Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 3:19 pm on 9 February 2021.
Well, Llywydd, I agree that the challenge that faces the health service post coronavirus is very real, that it will not be a recovery that will happen overnight, and I agree that it will need to be a recovery that is properly planned, and planned with clinicians. There is no pushback from this Government in terms of making sure that our health service is in a position to recover. There is a dialogue, and a dialogue does mean that there will be competing perspectives and different pressures. Now, the health Minister has been in conversation with interests in the cancer field very recently indeed in order to be able to plan ahead, as I said in my answer to the first question this afternoon from Rhianon Passmore. Cancer services have been classified as an essential service by the Welsh Government right through the pandemic. We have to do more to give patients, sometimes, the confidence to come forward and to take up treatment when they are fearful of the level of coronavirus in circulation. And I echo the views of the health Minister, which I've heard him say very recently, that, where people have treatments available to them, particularly where those treatments are urgently necessary, we urge those people to come forward, because our health service has organised itself to make sure that those treatments can be delivered safely and successfully.