Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to reply to this important debate around the 'Waiting well?' report and waiting times. I'm very pleased that we were able to accept almost all of the recommendations, 26 out of 27. Obviously, we haven't gone into the detail in the response, but obviously there's a lot more detail in the planned care plan. Now, I published our plan to modernise and transform planned care services in April. And I'm sure the committee was pleased to see that many of the actions in that plan reflect the committee's findings and recommendations. Now, we're already making good progress against this plan, although it was only published in April, and the statistics we have are from April, so, obviously it will take a little bit of time to get up to speed. What we are doing is to focus on what we're doing to support people while they're waiting to be seen. 

Now, I am intensely aware, as health Minister, that every one of those thousands of people who are waiting for treatment are individuals. They're often waiting in pain, in anxiety, their families are concerned about them, and it's of course our duty to make sure that health boards are supporting people while they wait. Now, we know that planned care recovery won't happen overnight. It will take time, and, as you are aware, I've set some very clear, but ambitious milestones to recover and to reduce those long waiting lists, but, as I've said before, this is not going to be easy.

In response to Heledd Fychan, look—. Are we in a crisis? Look, it's not great, but I don't think we're in a crisis, and I'll tell you why. Because we are seeing 315,000 people in secondary care alone every month. That's not including GPs. Three hundred and fifteen thousand. That's not a system that's broken. That's a system that's working very well. And all those thousands of people working in the NHS, I think, would accept that, yes, it's under massive pressure. My God, they are working for those 315,000 people they are seeing on a monthly basis.

And, in terms of funding, well, over the term of this Senedd term, we've said we're going to spend £1 billion. I've made £680 million available so far—£170 million for every year, plus £15 million each year to support planned care transformation projects and £20 million to support value-based pathways. Now, our plan has been developed in collaboration with NHS staff to ensure it's focusing upon the things that are going to make a difference to people and the staff, and they're key partners in implementing the plan. That's why it was important that we built it with them. I'm clear that we must support and continue to build our workforce across both health and social care over the coming years. They've worked incredibly hard over the last few years, and we need to continue to invest and support their well-being. I understand and I hear what you're saying in terms of concerns around capacity to deliver, that that's what you heard from the stakeholders. Now, we are going to be producing a workforce delivery plan to support the recovery plan, and that's going to be ready later this summer, where we're going to set out our approach to support staff. I do worry; I worry every single day about the hundreds of thousands of people who are literally just waiting for their appointments, and it is important that we let people know that we haven't forgotten them, that we are going to reach out to them and support them whilst they are waiting.

We are making great progress—a new service, the wellness improvement service at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board I think is really exciting. The programme supports patients to manage their conditions through an evidence-based lifestyle approach to improve their mental and physical well-being, and we're evaluating the advantages of a number of different models to support patients while they wait, including the Red Cross pilot across three health boards. 

Now, the removal of COVID restrictions in May means that we can now start to see and treat even more patients, but COVID is still with us and there are pretty high rates in our communities at the moment. I'm sure we all know somebody at the moment who's got COVID, and that's going to impact on health workers. So, we've just got to bear in mind that we're still living with a pandemic, and that's going to have an impact on our ability to deliver. On 27 June, there were over 600 COVID patients in hospital. Luckily, there were only eight in critical care.

Now, I know that waiting times are nowhere near where they should be. At the end of April, there were 707,000 open pathways. We're starting now, thank goodness, to see some improvements, and April data showed for the first time that the number of pathways waiting for over two years is now falling. Now, we are, as anticipated and as we predicted, starting to see more people requiring and being referred to secondary care, and the problem we have, of course, is that they keep on coming on to the lists. So, we've seen the demand increase—compared to two years ago, up 13 per cent. So, the January to April figures are 13 per cent more than what we were seeing at the same period last year. So, reducing waiting times and supporting patients while they're waiting is my priority; it's the health service's priority.