Llywydd, can I thank the Member for those very important questions? Let me begin by agreeing with him that, of course, we welcome the establishment of the inquiry, chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff. I'm pleased to be able to report to the Chamber that the Welsh Government has secured core participant status in the inquiry, which gives us extra rights of access to the inquiry, and the inquiry, I understand, intends to come to Wales on 23 July and will spend four days here taking evidence directly from those affected and those infected in the contaminated blood scandal, and we will do whatever we can as a Welsh Government to assist people to make sure that they can put their case to the inquiry.

But to go to the specific point the Member raised, on 21 January this year a meeting was held, chaired by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, at which it was agreed that there was a need for a UK-wide approach, with parity for all those affected, and that meeting was attended by Scotland, by Wales, and by UK Ministers, and we came away from that meeting having signed up to that proposition and made efforts to secure further meetings beyond 21 January. However, on 30 April—the first day of the infected blood inquiry—the UK Government made a unilateral announcement of additional funding for English patients only. There was no consultation, there was no prior ministerial notice, and it was a breach of the agreement that had been reached on 21 January. We since had a letter from a junior Minister at the Department of Health. It takes your breath away, really, when she says to us, 'I believe', she says, 'That we could all benefit from greater dialogue and co-operation on these matters'. It beggars belief, really, that such a letter could be sent to us when they had done exactly the opposite. The campaigners, the charities and campaign groups who had been part of the meeting on 21 January have since written to the Prime Minister saying that their understanding was that those discussions were for the whole of the United Kingdom. 'We assume', they said, 'That the decision involved devolved administrations and have learned with a mixture of disappointment, anger and frustration that that has turned out not to be the case'.

Now, Llywydd, during the first decade of devolution, the Government at the UK level observed scrupulously the agreement that anything that had happened prior to devolution was a cost on the UK Government. Things that have happened since devolution, of course, are a cost on us here. The awful scandal in contaminated blood happened many, many years before devolution and the devolution rules seem to me unambiguously to require that if money is provided by the UK Government for patients in England, then the same help must be available to patients throughout the United Kingdom, and we will continue to make that case as vigorously as we can with UK Ministers.