Thank you to Members for the variety of comments, and for the broad support for the point and purpose of the Bill, although I recognise there are some points of both clarification and reassurance and, indeed, some points about potential amendments that Members have signalled they might make.

I do just want to deal at the outset, though, with the point made in a couple of contributions about whether or not we are a more litigious society or not and, indeed, the cost of making medical negligence claims. Look, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that people are more likely to complain now than 20 or 30 years ago. We're less deferential, and I actually think that's an expansion in people's access to justice; I don't think that's a bad thing at all. Part of our challenge, though, is, in terms of the cost of medical negligence claims, we are more aware of the significance of the impact of potential negligence, particularly if it happens, as we've seen at the start of this week, to a young person; there is life-long care involved. And I'm always nervous, when people talk about restricting the cost, about whether that means restricting people's access by restricting the cost recovery, and that then means that, essentially, for some people, you could be saying that, if you can't pay for it yourself, you won't get access to justice, or, indeed, about potentially restricting the overall recovery of costs for an individual who has suffered a form of negligence. And, regardless of what field it is in, I don't think it's the right approach to say that we should restrict the level of justice that people can receive. There are difficult challenges about things for us to do, but, actually, that is more about us improving the care that we provide, the quality within the system and the candour. There's different legislation that's trying to make improvements to the quality of care we provide in every part of the United Kingdom as well as the legislation we're piloting through the Assembly at present. But I think that's the area of focus in terms of how we reduce the cost of medical negligence. I don't think the focus should be on having an artificial restriction on people who have a form of complaint to be adjudicated upon.

I'll just reiterate a couple of points I made in my contribution and thank the scrutiny committee chairs for giving me an opportunity to respond to them both in the early part of the debate, but I think I dealt with the points about timing. I put that on record. It wasn't possible to bring this forward in previous legislative statements; that's why it happened in the most recent one. It's also worth pointing out that, in terms of the scheme of regulations, section 30, as I said, in NHS Wales Act, they're all negative procedure regulations and the future liability scheme has been introduced on that basis too.

In terms of the points about resources and asset transfer, I'm happy to confirm what, again, I said in my opening contribution about the scale of that asset transfer and how and when we'll be able to provide an indication of what that is. So, I'm happy to reiterate the acceptance of the recommendation made by the Finance Committee.

In terms of our experience from the running of the risk pool for secondary care, I think this should give people practicing in primary care some confidence, not just of the financially well-run process that exists, but actually the level of direct care and support provided within that, and I don't think that it would be acceptable for me to say that there should be a bargain basement of that, if you like, individual or pastoral support available. So, I'm happy to say that is not the expectation and GPs themselves have a level of confidence about this more broadly.

It's also worth pointing out that, in terms of the way in which the risk pool is run across NHS Wales at present, it is well-regarded within Wales and, indeed, across our border for the efficiency in which it is run. That should, again, give Members some confidence about the financial judgments that have been made, together with the independent advice that we've sought on that point.

And, in terms of the point about not having an impact on cross-border activity, the point I made at the outset is that we will definitely have an impact on cross-border activity if we don't have regulations in place to provide a similar scheme for general practice in Wales when the English scheme comes into force at the start of April next year. I'm happy to restate my commitment to update Members on progress with medical defence organisations. That's both when I hope I'll be in a position to confirm agreement with the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland. Those are constructive negotiations that are taking place—