Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:23 pm on 8 June 2021.
Certainly, I am very aware of the fact that we have literally hundreds of thousands of people in Wales who are waiting for treatment on the NHS. We are, unfortunately, in this very, very difficult situation where, I think, people generally are fairly understanding that we had a crisis, and we've had to respond to that crisis, and that crisis continues. We can't still go back to normal practice. We have to understand that if we saw a case of the delta variant getting into a hospital, there could be very tragic consequences. So, we cannot go back to a normal situation yet, but we are trying to see what we can do to speed up the process to try and get things back into a situation where we can start to clear that backlog. We've already committed to the fact that we will be spending £1 billion in the next few years of additional funding to try and do something to tackle this backlog. We've announced an extra £100 million already so we can start on that process; that £25 million for equipment, for diagnosis, is also something that we hope will try and speed up the process. But this is going to take a long time, and I think it is important that we manage the expectations of the Welsh public when it comes to treatment. But I am very concerned about the pain and discomfort that people are suffering across Wales.