Responding to the Finance Secretary’s Statement on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, I thanked and congratulated him and David Lidington, Minister for the UK Cabinet Office, “for the measured, mature and pragmatic way you've conducted negotiations to secure agreement”, so that returning EU powers in otherwise devolved areas will pass to the devolved Governments and legislatures. Recognising the need for UK-wide frameworks in specific areas to avoid disruption to the UK’s own internal market, the Welsh Government has agreed not to legislate in these areas until such frameworks have been agreed.
I again challenged the Health Secretary to improve prostate cancer diagnosis rates in North Wales by ensuring that men have access to scans which are over 90% accurate, compared to the 47% accuracy of the biopsies currently offered by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, and referred to the £75 million research project launched by the UK Prime Minister, which will recruit 40,000 men in England into trials for better diagnosis and treatments for the disease using mpMRI scans. As one affected constituent told me after watching the Health Secretary’s response: ‘If my understanding of the current NICE guidelines is correct, his statement to the Senedd that service provision in the Welsh NHS is in line with NICE guidelines is patently not true, as you evidenced in your question’.
Questioning the Environment Minister, Hannah Blythyn, after her Statement on Air Quality, I referred to both the A55/A494 route in Flintshire and the Welsh Government’s chosen route for the Caernarfon-Bontnewydd A487 bypass.
Assembly engagements included Welsh Women's Aid, Cross Party Group on Haemophilia and Contaminated Blood, and British Veterinary Association briefing.
Hosted by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) Wales and Developer Galliford Try, I visited the new North Wales Police Eastern Command and Custody Facility in Llay, Wrexham.
I visited Lixwm Primary School to discuss its threatened closure and forced amalgamation by Flintshire County Council. The Education Secretary is amending Wales’ School Organisation Code to introduce a presumption against the closure of rural schools and ensure that local authorities conscientiously consider all viable alternatives, including federation with other schools. As she said last week, “my expectation is that local authorities should be working with the grain of the new code. They are well aware of my intentions and my policy intentions”.
It was a real pleasure to attend Denbigh Men’s Shed ‘Autism Acceptance’ Community Event and Official Opening of their new “Autism Spectrum Community Wellbeing Shed”.
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