6. Will the First Minister make a statement on oncology provision in Mid and West Wales? OAQ(5)0668(FM)

Powys teaching health board and Hywel Dda university health board are both committed to providing the best-quality and timely cancer care to their respective populations.

I thank the First Minister for that reply. Will he join me in congratulating Elly Neville who’s aged nine years old and has raised £109,500 for the support of work in ward 10 in Withybush hospital, where her father was treated for cancer? Although I acknowledge that the Welsh Government has been doing a great deal to try to reduce waiting times in hospitals for cancer treatment, we’re still missing the 62-day target by quite a bit, and that produces inevitable problems, like my other constituent whose wife is battling cancer for the second time and has had her application for treatment rejected both by the NHS in Wales and by London specialists and has gone to be treated privately, and instead of being given no hope, as she was by the NHS in Wales, has been given the information now that her cancer is capable of being treated.

I know that this is an inevitable problem with limited resources, but if we can provide the resources that are needed to treat all such sad cases, we’re never going to be faced with these difficult decisions in the first place, which is going to be to everybody’s advantage. So, can the First Minister perhaps give us a forward view of what he hopes his Government will be able to achieve in relation to cutting these waiting times and treatment decisions for cancer in the coming years of this Assembly?

Three things: first of all, in Powys, for example, the performance against the 62-day pathway has been 100 per cent on five occasions in the last 12 months. In Hywel Dda, more than 90 per cent of patients on the 62-day pathway were seen within target—it’s been about 90 per cent on six occasions in the past 12 months.

With regard to his constituent’s case, it’s very difficult for me to comment without knowing more about it. He’s welcome, of course, to write on his constituent’s behalf if he feels that that is appropriate. Elly I’ve met, so I know how enthusiastic and energetic she is, and she’s a great credit to her parents and indeed to Pembrokeshire and to Wales.

First Minister, radium-223 is a vital tool in fighting stage 4 prostate cancer. It is National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved and has been implemented, I think via the new treatment fund, so far in north Wales. However, there is real drag here in the south. Neither Velindre hospital nor Singleton are yet ready to offer this. It is a nuclear medicine so it does require particular set-ups. However, I am told that when and if Velindre are able to offer it, it will then be available to the people in south-east Wales but not able to take on board patients who will be coming up from mid and west Wales. Of course, I’m deeply concerned about that, because a significant number of my constituents also suffer from prostate cancer. At the moment, everyone in south Wales has to go to Bristol to have this treatment—that doesn’t save a life, but it prolongs a life, and if it’s your life I’m sure that’s beyond important.

Could you please, First Minister, review this? Could you look at how north Wales have managed to implement this very vital strand of medicine, why it’s not happening in south Wales, what we can do to make sure that Velindre and/or Singleton get the opportunity to offer it, and that when it is here in south Wales it is offered equitably to every single constituent in Wales, no matter where they live?

There will be no question of people not being offered a treatment in one part of Wales if it’s available in other parts of Wales via the new treatment fund. That’s what the fund is designed to eradicate—the postcode lottery. Implementation of the fund is going well, but it’s not as consistent as I want it to be at the moment. Instructions have been given by the Cabinet Secretary to the health boards that he expects the situation to be consistent, certainly by the end of the summer, and then we will be at the point where the postcode lottery has been completely eradicated. It’s on the way to that happening now, but the health boards have been told very clearly that this is something that the Government will see done.