I thank Peter Fox for that question. I've been able to read his letter to the health Minister and I've seen her reply. I hope that it will provide some information that is useful for his constituent in what are clearly very distressing individual circumstances. 

The system works hard every month to deal with the increased volume of cases that come through the door. And it's a good thing that more cases come through the door, because we want to ensure that people are referred into the system as early as possible. August saw the highest number of patients treated in this financial year, and it saw the highest ever number of patients told that they did not have cancer—13,500 patients in Wales in August went through the system and were told that they didn't have that awful disease hanging over them. When you count up the people who were treated, and the people who were told they didn't need treatment, that comes to over 14,500 people, which are the highest numbers we've ever managed. And yet 16,000 people were referred into the system in the same month. As I say, Llywydd, that is good news, because that means we are seeing more people, and earlier, and hopefully more of those people will find out that they don't have to face a cancer diagnosis.

But you will see, and the Member for Monmouth will see, that even if you are managing record numbers of people coming through the system, if you've got record numbers of people coming into the system, the system is still flat out. That's why we do have the new rapid diagnostic centres, that's why we have the new one-stop clinics, that's why we are developing the straight-to-test diagnostics system. All of these are efforts being made by clinicians to find a way of both responding to the new referrals and dealing with people who have been in the system too long already.