Diolch yn fawr. I'd like to thank Russell and the Conservatives for bringing forward this important debate about cancer services and outcomes. I can tell you that I've listened very carefully to everything that's been said and I will go away and I will consider your deliberations and make sure that I give some serious thought to what you have been talking about this afternoon. I'm afraid I won't be able to support the resolution on a number of grounds, and I'd like to explain why. But I do acknowledge that we need to do better on cancer. It is genuinely a matter of life and death. I accept that the quality statement has got to be the start of the story, not the end of the story, and certainly there's a lot more work to do in this space. 

One of the problems with the motion is that it conflates overall waiting times with cancer waiting times. The waiting time for normal elective care is very different from the 62-day cancer pathway. Cancer patients have always been treated with clinical urgency in Wales. Cancer was designated an essential service at the start of the pandemic, and, whenever possible, we've maintained and we've prioritised cancer services throughout. This has resulted in new pathways and seeing patients differently. Some of those lessons are genuinely positive and we need to embed them. 

The motion also implies that a cancer strategy is the only way to improve cancer outcomes and alleges that Wales is an outlier across the UK. But I'm afraid that that's just not the case. At the moment, England includes cancer in its long-term plan, Northern Ireland doesn't have a strategy, and Scotland's strategy predates the pandemic. It is self-evident that in order to recover cancer services we will have to deliver more cancer treatment than we have historically, but the difficulty is that we're still in the middle of a pandemic where productivity is reduced by infection controls and by staff having to isolate.

Nonetheless, I don't wish to dismiss the concern that we all feel about how the pandemic has impacted on cancer services. I've said on many occasions how concerned I am about the impact on cancer services. That's why we brought forward our new approach to cancer services during the pandemic. That's why cancer was the only disease that was singled out in the March 2021 recovery plan. It's why I'm making recovery in cancer services a key focus of health board planning. It's why I'm investing in recovery activity, new equipment, training more cancer clinicians and new facilities across Wales. It's my intention to publish a planned care recovery plan in April, and this of course will include a range of actions and measures that will support cancer patients. 

There has been much criticism levelled at the concept of a quality statement for cancer, but I'd remind Members that our intention to publish a series of quality statements was set out in 'A Healthier Wales'. It was the response to the parliamentary review. It said that quality statements would describe the outcomes and the standards we'd expect to see in high-quality, patient-focused services.