<p>Oncology Provision in Mid and West Wales</p>

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:06 pm on 20 June 2017.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 2:06, 20 June 2017

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?