I’ll keep my contribution today short. I just want to state my support, very simply, for this important motion. The aim is very simple too, and it’s also extremely exciting, I think. The aim is to eradicate hepatitis C in Wales in its entirety. Yes, there is a commitment from the World Health Organization to eradicate by 2030, but we, here in Wales, could move according to a tighter timescale than that. The first part of the motion before us shows that a great deal of the infrastructure, in terms of health, is available to us already, specifically the people within our health service, and I’m very pleased to be able to thank them for the major steps that have already been taken in that regard.

I’d also like to thank Julie Morgan for the work that she does in this particular field. It’s been a pleasure to collaborate not just on hepatitis C and the eradication that we hope to see in the years to come, but also on the subject of contaminated blood. It’s struck me, as it has the Member for Cardiff North, that the problem is a lack of patients, almost, at present. That’s a tribute to the staff that we have within the health service. It sounds very strange, but we have more capacity than we have patients to go through the system. It’s fair to say that we don’t talk about that very often when we talk about the NHS, but it is true in this particular instance. The truth is it’s about finding those people who haven’t yet received a diagnosis, who don’t know that they’re in an at-risk group, who don’t show symptoms. That’s the challenge in front of us, to be able to move forward towards eradication.

I won’t repeat some for the comments that have already been made with regard to how to do that, by tightening up primary care, by searching for groups that might be at a higher risk—more testing in prisons and for drug users, and in the antenatal system, and so on. The good work and the foundations have already been laid, and I’m very grateful to the Government for the strides taken in this regard already. But I’m pleased that the motion is before us today, and I’m pleased to be able to support this motion to give that extra push towards reaching that aim that is genuinely achievable in Wales. It’s something that I know that we, as a nation, will be very proud of when we do achieve it.