3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: Progress on the New Treatment Fund

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:14 pm on 23 January 2018.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:14, 23 January 2018

I'll deal with your last point first. I recently launched Health Technology Wales, which is a way of looking at non-medicines to look at technology within the health service and for its more rapid adoption. We have a range of different ways in which we've tried to do that in the past—the efficiency through technology programme has had a good record of having a range of things at pace and scale across our service. There's more of that to come in the broad approach. But Health Technology Wales is a way to appraise new technology and to give us an understanding of what we should then do, and how we should try and see that delivered across the service. I'll have more to say on Health Technology Wales as we've got a longer period of time to understand its having come into being, and then its impact across the whole health and care system. Of course, that is one of the challenges set to us by the parliamentary review, on how we deliver more innovation at pace and at scale.

There's something here about the new treatment fund, and it's worth reminding all of us that politics is a business where we should have some principles and some values and beliefs, but it's also, ultimately, a practical business. I make no apology at all for recognising where we were, where some recommended medicines were not being introduced as fast or as consistently as they should have been. And we could either have said, 'We'll go after health boards and look to discipline people, and go after them', or we could say, 'How do we make sure that we get this faster and more rapid access?' We've taken a decision to actually do a number of things, and the new treatment fund is obviously part of that. It has also been part of a change in the way that health boards plan for new medicines to come into place. Part of the reason they found it difficult was actually the ability to make a financial choice in the first year of a new treatment being introduced. Actually, after that first year, it's much easier then to continue delivering within a budgetary framework. So, this is recognising the pinch point at the start of a new medicine becoming available, and it's also why—my point that I raised in response to Angela Burns about the improved relationship with the industry itself is really important for us too. All of those things matter in what we've done, and I'm delighted that the pledge that we've made to the people has been kept. This was a manifesto pledge that my party made, and it's a good thing that we're able to say that there are times that politicians really do keep their pledges. And, indeed, we kept our pledge on the agreement we reached with Plaid Cymru, but also the cross-party engagement, on the individual patients funding requests review as well. So, we're making real progress in these areas, and I hope that, in broader health service reform, and the opportunities to make a difference, we can continue some of that grown-up politics approach to doing that.