ENGLAND’S Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt gave his support to two Usk women battling to get the Welsh Government to set up a cancer drugs fund earlier today.

Mr Hunt visited Usk Conservative Club and met Ann Wilkinson and Julie McGowan.

Mrs Wilkinson has cancer but had to battle for life-prolonging drug Avastin after she was originally refused it – even though it is available on the NHS in England.

Mr Hunt said the Welsh Government’s decision “flies in the face of all the international evidence”.

And he said of his trip to Wales: “The reason I’ve talked about the Welsh Government is that in the House of Commons Ed Miliband is constantly saying only Labour know how to run the NHS and he’s completely ignoring what’s happening in a country run by Labour.

“Labour have got a fundamental misunderstanding about the NHS which is that they think that if everyone can have an NHS hospital or GP, it’s enough because before you couldn’t. But actually for me the point of the NHS isn’t that everyone can get to see a doctor: it’s that you get good quality healthcare.”

Monmouth Parliamentary candidate David Davies and AM Nick Ramsay were also at the meeting.

Author Mrs McGowan set up a petition calling for a Welsh cancer drugs fund to match England's last year and it was signed by 98,500 people. It was handed to Prime Minister David Cameron at Downing Street in November.

The friends travelled to Cardiff to hand their petition to the Welsh Government’s health minister Mark Drakeford earlier that month. But they had to give it to their own Assembly Member, Conservative Mr Ramsay, when Labour politicians rejected to accept it.

Mrs McGowan said: “The problem is that because the Welsh Government won’t listen to any petition verbally or written or any move we make, it’s difficult to know what to do next.”

Mrs Wilkinson said: “That is the difference: it didn’t start out being political but then people who did listen were the Conservatives.”

And Mrs McGowan added: “We’ve tried so hard not to make it a political football but the politicians are doing that themselves.”

Commenting on Jeremy Hunt’s visit to Wales, Welsh Labour’s Deputy Health Minister Vaughan Gething said: “Once again Mr Hunt has come to Wales with one purpose in mind – to talk down Wales and the Welsh NHS. All this from a man who has presided over a disastrous £3 billion top-down reorganisation of the health service in England, which has dismantled the national health service which Bevan founded and which the public holds so dear.

“Every time Mr Hunt speaks about the NHS it reminds people why the health service is only safe in Labour’s hands.

“People in Wales continue to have access to evidence-based treatments for all conditions – not just cancer - which have been approved for use in the NHS by both the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group.

“We continue to invest millions in new and innovative life-saving treatments every year in Wales despite a £1.4 billion cut to the Welsh budget by the Tory-led UK government.”