Janet Finch-Saunders

First Minister, we welcome your own manifesto commitment of £80 million for a new treatment fund. This of course follows on the back of the Welsh Conservatives calling for many years for a cancer treatment drugs fund to end the inequality and postcode lottery that does exist here in Wales. Will you pledge on record here today, First Minister, that during this Assembly term we will not see any patient having to travel out of Wales to receive the very necessary treatment they need? But also, to widen the scope available to you, will you look at the millions of pounds wasted on routine treatment drugs so freely available over the counter in supermarkets? This is all part of your free prescriptions for all, and I think it would be much better to see this money targeted in a better way towards a cancer treatments fund.

Carwyn Jones (First Minister)

Ah, the tablet tax makes its reappearance. No, we have no plans to start charging people for prescriptions, any more than we have plans to start charging people for GP appointments. I don’t anticipate anybody crossing the border, because the cancer drugs fund in England has gone. It collapsed under the weight of its own pressure. So, what we’ve put in place is a sensible, affordable fund where people will have access—not just people with cancer, because there are, obviously, other life-threatening conditions, and it’s important that people are treated equally with life-threatening conditions—but where they will be able to access drugs as quickly as possible, as soon as they’re approved by NICE or the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group. We think that is a sensible, fair and humane fund that will be available to, yes, those who are living with cancer, but also people who are living with a number of life-threatening conditions.