Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary, and your letter earlier today. The news that patients can now benefit from the new treatment fund is most welcome and will be of great relief to many Welsh patients, some of whom have gone to England previously for treatment.

When access to medicines is discussed, it usually relates solely to cancer drugs, so it is refreshing to see that new medicines have become available to treat conditions such as cystic fibrosis, severe asthma and hepatitis C, as well as treatments for lung, breast and renal cancer. Other than to welcome the fund’s introduction, Cabinet Secretary, I only have a few questions for you, as we have discussed this scheme at length last year. Cabinet Secretary, in your letter, you mention that 60 new medicines have been approved since April. Are you working with the pharmaceutical sector to ensure that we are conducting sufficient horizon scanning, so we are adequately equipped to deal with new medicine appraisals in future?

Your statement and letter talk about the introduction of new medicines, but there is little mention of new treatments. Can you confirm that the fund will also allow for patients to access innovative new treatments, such as new types of radiotherapy and any new treatment that demonstrates clear clinical benefit for patients?

I am pleased to see you will be encouraging closer working relationships between the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry. We must work much more collaboratively with the pharmaceutical industry in future if we are to deliver improvements to patient care.

Cabinet Secretary, the new treatments fund is clearly earmarked to deliver better treatments for patients, so will you be allocating further resources in order to improve this collaborative working in future? We need improvements to the NHS infrastructure if we are to continue delivering the best available treatments to Welsh patients.

Thank you once again for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. I look forward to receiving details of how the scheme is working in practice when you report on progress later in the year. Diolch yn fawr.