Can I pay tribute to Lynne Neagle for that speech, but also for the work you've done in this area? I also want to put on record my thanks to Pancreatic Cancer UK for the information drop-in that they organised today, which I know many Members attended and we found the information there to be particularly valuable.

Deputy Presiding Officer, over the past 50 years, diagnosis and treatment strategies for cancer patients have evolved rapidly, transforming patient outcomes. Yet, despite the major advancements witnessed in other areas of oncology, improvements in pancreatic cancer patient outcomes have largely stood still. In sharp contrast to the remarkable growth in the survival rates observed in other disease areas like lung, breast and prostate cancer, the overall five-year survival rate for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer is just 5 per cent across the globe, and that's not really improved substantially since the 1970s.

Earlier this year, analysis positively suggested that cancer survival in the UK is improving, but it still lags behind other high-income countries, so we've got that part of the problem as well. Indeed, despite the improvements we are seeing, the UK still performed worse than Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand and Norway in the study published in The Lancet. Cancer Research UK says that the UK could do better and called for more investment in the NHS and the systems and innovations that support it, and that would be really important for pancreatic cancer and the prospects of improving outcomes.

As we've heard, one of the problems is that the early stages of the disease can be silent and symptoms are often not picked up, and therefore the disease is discovered late in its course. And also I think there is a general poor public perception of pancreatic cancer and awareness, and this, added to the standard diagnostic tools frequently leading to delays in identification, and that they're not as advanced as some other areas of cancer treatment—the outcomes are that, by the time someone knows they have the disease, curative surgery, for instance, is not any longer viable.

But, despite these rather daunting statistics, there have been signs of improvement and we need to build on these achievements, and obviously we've got great organisations that I've referred to campaigning actively in this area, as well as those that have the disease or their families, and we know what powerful political force is brought by those that come and give witness of their personal experience and that of their loved one. So, I think it's really important we build on this to increase the wealth of established research that we have and ensure that incremental improvements are valued and then seen across the field, and then combined with other advances so that we have a holistic approach. There are many, many things that need to be got right and improved to give an overall advance in prognosis and also to extend the treatment options available. So, I think that really is key to what we need to do, but, above all, I think it is this drive to get earlier diagnosis, and that leads to improved treatments, and we need to ensure that that applies in the field of research but also that we take patients and the public with us so that their awareness is improved also.

I was very pleased to read earlier this month that Dr Catherine Hogan at Cardiff University's European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute had been awarded £373,000-worth of funding by Cancer Research UK to understand how pancreatic cancer cells develop, with the aim of developing diagnostic tools for the future. So, we have a proud record also in Wales and in our universities and medical schools, and that's something, I think, that we need to contribute and ensure that we take that to its maximum extent and back it as well. But getting those major funding sources and bringing them into Wales is important.

But I finish, really, with this plea that we all get more aware of pancreatic cancer, both in terms of where it is as a public health issue—the tenth most common cancer, as we've heard—but also it will ensure that we drive this up the political list of priorities so that we see the advances that have been pleasingly achieved in many areas of cancer treatment come to pancreatic cancer. Thank you very much.