It’s a pleasure to reply to this debate, which has been an excellent debate. May I congratulate everyone who’s participated in it? What we have before us is the story of great success in the health service in Wales. Back in the day, when I was a young medical student with a bright future—just a few years ago—we were talking about hepatitis A and hepatitis B and then hepatitis non-A and non-B. We have since then found a number of other viruses: hepatitis A, B, C, D, E—all different sub-strains of that virus.

Not only have we discovered these, but we’ve also been able to treat them. Many years ago, we would find hepatitis but we couldn’t do anything to treat it. The landscape has been transformed. Amid all of these complaints about our health service, we forget about the bigger picture: that there is wonderful work happening in the background. We have the ability now to eradicate hepatitis C and hepatitis B. We have the technology and we have the drugs available to us.

I’m particularly grateful to my fellow Members for supporting this motion, which naturally congratulates the staff of the NHS, calls on the Welsh Government to confirm their commitment—and I’ve heard the words of the Cabinet Secretary and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for those words—and also the other considerations before us in this debate this afternoon. First of all, I’d like to thank Julie Morgan for her expert opening of this debate and congratulate her on her work as the chair of the haemophilia group. Many of the aspects here are crosscutting in terms of these issues. I also congratulate Mark Isherwood on his contribution, as well as Rhun, of course.

In recalling Hefin David’s contribution, well, yes, it can take many years for this disease to emerge, because it is very difficult to identify. You can question people and they simply don’t remember if, at some point in the past, they suffered extreme tiredness. People simply don’t remember; they forget. Therefore, it is difficult to carry out that diagnosis, unless you focus on those people, as many people have already mentioned, in prisons and those injecting drugs, of course. That is why those needle exchange programmes are so crucially important in eradicating this disease. That was also mentioned by Hefin David.

May I also thank Caroline Jones and Dawn Bowden for their contributions and, as I’ve already mentioned, the Cabinet Secretary, who told us about the excellent system that we have here in Wales? We’re in the vanguard. We often compare ourselves unfavourably in this country with other countries, but Wales is in the vanguard when it comes to issues such as hepatitis C. Because the challenge remains, despite our ability to eradicate it. Because, as we’ve already heard, we are treating those people who are already identified. The point is we’re not identifying 50 per cent of the people. So, there is some work to be done in identifying those people who carry this virus.

We have to deal with stigma, of course. People often fear going to their GP because they have lives that are often difficult and chaotic, and they feel that people will criticise them for what they’ve done in the past. Therefore, there is a challenge there for us to deal with all those systems.

But ultimately, when one can identify exhaustion with the possibility that they have been infected by contaminated blood, we have to then start to think about the possibility that hepatitis C is the cause, and that’s the challenge for us, as doctors and nurses: to be aware of that. But also, there is a challenge, once we’ve identified those people, to ensure that they continue with the treatment. When you do have difficult, challenging lifestyles, which are often chaotic, then it’s difficult to maintain that treatment too.

There are a number of challenges, but, whilst I welcome all of the contributions that we’ve heard this afternoon—and I also welcome the Government’s response—this country is in the vanguard when it comes to issues related to hepatitis C. We have the technology, we have the treatments available, and we should go for it. Please support the motion. Thank you.