Diolch yn fawr, Alun. I'm very aware of the fact that there are literally hundreds of thousands of patients, many waiting in severe pain for an operation. I can assure you that apart from COVID and preparing the NHS for winter, addressing this backlog is absolutely my top priority. 

Now, I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of NHS staff have gone way beyond and above the call of duty in this past year. When it comes to consultants, they are contracted to carry out a certain number of sessions that they provide to the NHS, and they have to undertake that before they offer anything in terms of additional work outside of the NHS.

The Wales Audit Office report found that the level of private sector activity in NHS facilities is about 0.02 per cent of all activity, so it's a very low level anyway. I think what's important is that we recognise that long waits at the moment mean that some patients are making those really difficult decisions to go private, but I can assure you that all patients are being seen in an order of clinical priority.

Our priority at the moment is to get those who need the urgent care to be seen first. But, I think it is important that we put our measures in place, as we talked about earlier, to prepare the NHS to get us into a better place for the medium term, not just to address the immediate crisis that we're facing today.