Thank you for that very disappointing answer, I have to say. The All Wales Medicines Strategy Group does estimate that each year around 50 cervical cancer patients in Wales will receive a terminal diagnosis who could require Avastin treatment. But given your endorsement of their recommendation, I find it very hard to understand the process going forward for these patients. Cervical cancer patients will now have to attempt to access this via the independent patient funding request route, which is often an untimely and uncertain process, and I do accept, Cabinet Secretary, that you’ve made great strides to try to solve some of the problems there. But, nonetheless, in 2016 the IPFR annual report stated that an average of just 50 per cent of all cancer drug requests were accepted, so by this estimation potentially half of all of those with advanced stage cervical cancer will not get access to a potentially life-prolonging drug.

What assurances can you give that all cervical cancer patients who need Avastin will be able to access it in a timely manner via IPFR, especially when you remember that time is a luxury that these patients can ill afford? And could you please explain to me why it is the case that the Scottish Medicines Consortium and England’s cancer drugs fund both approved Avastin as a drug routinely accessible within their respective health services, whilst the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group did not? Why is your Government putting female cancer patients in Wales at a distinct disadvantage to English and Scottish patients in the same situation? And finally, Cabinet Secretary, what efforts has your Government made to ensure greater consistency in how clinicians across Wales’s seven health boards will interpret the clinical exceptionality clause when submitting applications via the IPFR? These women are in desperate need, it’s a dreadful disease, it buys them a little time, and they have as much right as their sisters across any of the borders north or to the east of us.