I'd like to firstly thank Mabon for bringing forward such an important debate today, and also say that I'm sorry to hear what his family is going through and to hear the personal reasons for him bringing this debate to the Senedd today.

The points raised so far will be both concerning and upsetting to people the length and breadth of our country. The Welsh Government's announcement of the new single pathway for Welsh patients to ensure treatment begins, if cancer is suspected, within 62 days is welcome news after years of growing waiting lists for cancer diagnosis and treatment. It has been a shameful reflection on successive Labour Governments' historic inaction to tackle excessively long cancer diagnosis and treatment times. Despite the introduction of the new single pathway, horrendously long waiting lists still blight Wales and are still only getting longer. Quite clearly, far more is needed to rectify the current cancer crisis that we face. A significant portion of the problem has been caused by the chronic shortage of hospital staff across our health board departments. Once again, we've seen successive Labour Governments allow our NHS to go upstream without a paddle.

It's all well and good introducing new strategies to bring down waiting lists and improve outcomes for patients, but it's being set up to fail. If we don't ensure that there are enough staff to deliver results, then this new strategy will just become a sticking plaster for a very deep wound. We know that the pandemic has had a significant impact since its inception in March 2020. We've all heard stories of various people suspected of having cancer going undiagnosed for far too long, thus exacerbating historic backlogs. Sadly, most of these problems were here long before the pandemic struck. I find it extremely concerning that, despite the World Health Organization's recommendation that all countries should have a cancer strategy in place, Wales is still waiting for a clear, multi-pronged action plan that can tackle the heart of this issue.

This Welsh Government needs to act and it needs to act now. We're in dire need of a short-term strategy put in place to tackle the immediate staffing issues facing the NHS. Without this, there can be no hope of bringing down waiting lists. Indeed, we may only see waiting lists increase otherwise. This needs to be coupled with the introduction of a long-term plan to drive down waiting lists, so that patients can access treatment as soon as possible, preferably before that 62-day target. The Labour Government can no longer rest on its laurels and bury its head in the sand under the delusion that problems will fix themselves. They can't just revert to blaming Westminster either, because the buck stops here, Welsh Labour Government.

These issues demand urgent and targeted intervention now. Rapid diagnosis is absolutely key. The situation needs to be brought under control, otherwise we will continue to have excessively long waiting lists and increased deaths caused by cancer, many of which could be entirely avoidable with appropriate action. Wales being the only nation in the UK without a strategy is just not good enough; the time to act is the time now.