Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I also want to extend my thanks to Nick Ramsay, the Member for Monmouth, for introducing this very important debate this evening. As he has said, motor neurone disease is a devastating disease. For the most common form of motor neurone disease, life expectancy is usually two to five years from the onset of symptoms, so I entirely agree with him that we need to do something very swiftly to make people able to live with such a debilitating illness. At the present time, as he also said, motor neurone disease cannot be stopped or reversed, but therapies, equipment and medication can help manage symptoms alongside adaptations to people's homes to make them as safe and accessible as possible.

There are around 200 people in Wales living with MND at any one time. Thankfully, it's not a common disease, but, for people who receive a diagnosis of MND, of course, this is no comfort at all. People suffering from MND, their partners, families and carers rightly expect us to do our utmost to help them maintain their independence and live out their lives with dignity. While the focus today is on people with MND, there are other debilitating and degenerative conditions too, as Nick Ramsay also said. If we can improve the way the system works for people with MND, that will obviously benefit that wider group of people too.