Good afternoon, Cabinet Secretary, and thank you very much for your statement today. We’re delighted to read of the progress that has been made, because we do welcome the £80 million commitment by Welsh Government over the next five years, and we welcome the plan—or your intention for the proper plan to be put in place—for the implementation of NICE recommendations, and we think it will make an enormous difference.

There are just a couple of questions I would like to ask on this. You mentioned earlier about the First Minister’s comments, saying that there was some variation in the availability of recommended medicines on health board formularies and that you are taking steps to try to address this issue. You may recall that, a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the use of radium-223 as a prostate cancer treatment available here in Wales. There is real confusion. I can’t get any answers from anyone, and I’d be very grateful if you would look at this. The health board in north Wales is using the new treatment fund to make it available. The health board in south Wales says, ‘No, you have to claim treatment for this through the individual patient funding request route.’ And when I ask Members’ research services and Welsh Government, I’m having real difficulty in getting the answers back. I think my real concern isn’t so much this one particular drug, although I think it highlights it, but are there many other areas where there is this disparity in how a treatment is being made available to people in Wales? I know that you will agree with me that the one thing we must stamp out is the postcode lottery, so I’d be very grateful for your commentary on that particular element of your statement.

You also talked about the fact that, in exceptional circumstances, the chief medical officer could be contacted to allow health boards further time to comply. I wonder what you might consider to be an exceptional circumstance. Health boards are mighty organisations. They have a significant amount of resources at their disposal. I just wonder what could possibly be an excellent excuse that would mean that they weren’t able to implement what they should be implementing on time.

I was really pleased to see your commentary about the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. I think they do sterling work in trying to work together. I am pleased to see that they are going to be doing the data sharing and the planning. Will we be able to bring any transparency to this? Of course, I’m sure that we’ve all had many pressure groups approach us about particular drugs, and I’m sure that your door is always being beaten down either by groups or reps from drugs companies. It would be really great, though, if we could bring any transparency available, obviously without breaching commercial confidentiality, so that patients and campaigners in Wales really understand what’s being looked at, so that they can have a feeling for how close or far away the decision-making process is on a particular drug that they feel should be included.

Finally, I was wondering, on the financial side, will the allocated moneys that you do end up claiming back from non-performance by particular health boards be retained within the new treatment fund? If not, where would you intend to put that money? If it is being retained within the new treatment fund, how would you then disperse that money? Would you be giving it to them at a later date, or would you be sharing it out among some of the more proactive health boards? I think that’s quite a tricky one because we do want to get rid of that postcode lottery, but we can’t hang around and only do it at the pace of the slowest and most tardy of our health boards. Thank you.