Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 24 March 2021.
Well, I think you're asking a number of different questions there, so I'll try to deal with where we are with the implementation plan first and its relationship to the cancer quality statement. The implementation plans will have to set out how they'll meet the outcomes and standards that we have set out in the quality statement, and that's the point. So, every health board will have to set out how they're meeting those expectations and the NHS exec will also have a role as, if you like, the central guiding hand that the parliamentary review called for, and we set out our response in 'A Healthier Wales', the long-term plan for health and care. So, that's the path that we're on and you will then see that framework and it will be open, because health boards will need to publish what they're going to do.
We'll then also have greater transparency and data from the single cancer pathway and the figures that we'll be providing on each stage. Cancer is a multifaceted challenge and it cuts across a range of other areas of treatment. So, when we talk about the workforce, it's not just the cancer workforce, because many of the surgeons we're talking about also undertake other surgery and the diagnostic workforce we're talking about undertake other diagnostics as well. For example, the centrally directed improvement programme on endoscopy, that will definitely benefit cancer services, but a range of other services too. So, I think sometimes it's difficult just to say that there is only a cancer workforce. We, of course, need to think about areas where we want to see continued improvement that are more specifically cancer, but it also affects the wider service as well.
I'm confident that, when you and I stand on a manifesto to seek re-election to this place, there'll be plans within there about reinvesting in the workforce and having more of our staff—taking account of the record-breaking levels of NHS staff we have already—that I believe will set out a pathway to continue the improvement in cancer services that we've seen over this last term, and to address the real and significant backlog that has built up in cancer services and the rest of our NHS, as a necessity in our response to the pandemic in this last year and more.