Cabinet Secretary, I welcome your statement today, and of course the Welsh Conservatives are delighted to see £12 million going into the NHS—all additional moneys into the NHS are more than welcome. However, I am somewhat confused by the promise that you made to people in your manifesto, which was, and I will read it to you, if I may:

‘We will introduce a ground breaking New Treatment Fund, enabling the most advanced drugs and high cost treatments for cancer and other life threatening illnesses to be available in Wales first.’

Now, many people will have taken that to read that, in those instances where drugs have been approved in terms of their technical ability—they do the job—but they have not been approved by NICE because of the cost-benefit analysis, then people have been trying to get those drugs through. And, when we talked about a cancer treatments fund from the Welsh Conservatives, we were talking about putting the money out for those kinds of drugs, whereas it seems to me that this money you are talking about today, the £12 million leading to the £80 million over five years, is actually about getting health boards to provide the drugs that have already been agreed by NICE, and already been agreed by the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group, a bit faster. To be frank, they should be doing that anyway, because all of the people of Wales, all of the citizens of Wales, have a right to access treatments that have been agreed and approved by those bodies, and no health board should be dilly-dallying over that.

So, please can you clarify for me what will happen for those drugs that have been approved in terms of their technical efficiency, but have not been approved because of the cost-benefit analysis—drugs that don’t fit into the independent patient funding requests system? Does this mean that there will be an end to the postcode lottery, where people in Wales were trying to travel into England or other home nations to access drugs and treatments that they couldn’t access here? If it means an end to that postcode lottery, I, for one, will be utterly, utterly delighted. So, I’d be grateful if you can clarify that for us.

I took on board the point the Welsh Government made that, actually, the problem with just having, for example, a cancer treatments fund was that it was too narrow, and I do welcome the fact that this is for all cruel and unusual illnesses, that this is for all new treatments, and, actually, could you please confirm to me that it doesn’t just relate to drugs but it might also relate to technical treatments—very specialised kinds of surgery, for example? Because I’d like to make sure that they were also included—surgery that’s not run of the mill. Could you clarify for me what would happen if NICE approve a drug? Is there ever a situation where the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group might not have the same opinion? Is there ever a conflict? If there is a conflict, is there a proposal in place for the resolution of that conflict?

Will you also confirm to me whether or not the money that is for new treatments will also include extra support around the drugs? Now, I did, obviously, read your paragraph that says to

‘support access to medicines in Wales, I will continue to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to work with’ health boards, et cetera, but, of course, quite a lot of these drugs will require dedicated support to implement them. So, will the money be used for just the drug, or the drug and the support, or would you expect the health board to do their reconfiguration of their support staff and their infrastructure from within their own funds? I think that would be a useful piece of clarification, because although £12 million, maybe £16 million, a year—£80 million over five years—is incredibly welcome, it’s a very finite number, and there are a lot of very new drugs coming on to the market that can do an awful lot to help prolong people’s lives and give them the treatments that they need, but of course are eye-wateringly expensive at the moment. So, I want to ensure that that money really does go just for the drug and not to enable a health board to do internal reconfiguration. Thank you for that.