Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 10 December 2019.
I thank the Member for that serious question and I'll try to continue to give him a serious answer. The reason why I think we are reluctant to pick a particular form of cancer and to declare that an emergency is that, for every patient who has a diagnosis of any form of cancer that is an emergency in their lives. We have been reluctant, I think, for very good reasons to go down a route in which we have a hierarchy of different conditions, in which we try and pick out a particular condition and try to say that it is somehow more important and more significant than another condition.
That's not to say that I don't understand the case that is made because of the very particular impact that this cancer and the difficulties of early diagnosis have. So, I'm not for a minute dismissing the case that is made, but in a serious answer that's the reason why we've been reluctant to go down that route. Pancreatic cancer for anybody who is suffering from it is an emergency, but so is it for somebody who has a liver cancer or a lung cancer or a breast cancer. And I'm reluctant to say that one form of cancer is somehow more urgent or more of an emergency than another because, from the patient's point of view, I really don't think it looks like that.