I thank the Member for that question, Llywydd. Very long waits in Wales continue to fall as well. They were 4 per cent down in the last month for which figures are available. A word of caution about assuming that everything is fine in any other part of the United Kingdom in relation to the NHS, and some of the claims that are made: when you look at the exceptions that lie behind them—'We have achieved this, apart from this, apart from that, apart from the other'—I think the figures are not to be taken just at the headline value. 

As for surgical hubs, we have indeed discussed them here before. The leader of the opposition will know that there are particular geographical challenges in Wales in identifying any hospital as being given over entirely to planned surgery, because those hospitals continue to provide necessary emergency responses as well. Nevertheless, there are efforts in different parts of the NHS in Wales to try to concentrate more planned surgery on a smaller number of sites in order to be able to protect the resources—the theatre space, the ward space—to allow planned surgery to go ahead.

At the orthopaedic summit, a whole range of these issues was discussed. How can we, in orthopaedics, make better use of things that prevent people from needing operations in the first place? If you are waiting for an operation, what more can be done to make sure, through physiotherapy and so on, that you can be looked after while you are waiting? As we emerge from the COVID experience, what more can we do to return theatres to the level of productivity that they were able to manage before the additional cleaning regimes became necessary to prevent the spread of the virus? All of these things were discussed and the Minister, as I said, will provide more details of it.

In parts of Wales, as I said—in Hywel Dda, at the Prince Philip Hospital; in Swansea bay at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital—dedicated protected space is being provided. They are not surgical hubs in the way that that definition is used elsewhere, but they perform the same function.