As the nation’s health service celebrates its anniversary, this time of year will forever be a time when thoughts turn to it.
It is obvious that the NHS is not a government agency that handles bureaucratic paperwork, but rather the people who support patients with illness and injury.
Doctors, nurses, as well as a wide range of auxiliary staff, are the ones who provide comfort and confidence during times of turmoil. They risk their lives fighting Covid.
And I don’t just say that as a politician: my wife is a ex-midwife,my brother-in-lawa GP,and my sisters-in-laware a consultant and a Cystic Fibrosis nurse, respectively.
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Now that we are past our harshest exposure to coronavirus, pandemic recovery is seemingly a reality in the UK – if a gradually realised one – apart from in Wales where it remains an aspiration only.
I will defend the efforts made by NHS workers with all my strength. As Leader of the Opposition in Wales Parliament, I have a duty to highlight the appalling mismanagement of Labour Government where burnt-out staff suffer alongside patients.
In Wales, only 1 in 8 people are on the NHS waiting list. 1-in-20 English patients have been waiting more than a year for treatment. For us Welsh, it is 1-in-4.
Not only is the wait time in Wales 10 more weeks, but there are five times as many people who have been waiting for over two years in England.
That last one is extraordinary – but key to remember here is that the numbers in England rose and fell very fast and shortly will be nil. It grew ninefold in a single year in Wales and is still strong.
England has a lot of room for improvement, but it is improving. It is disappointing to see people in my country seeing that there is recovery in one area of the UK, while another region remains in crisis.
I find it frustrating when the media focuses on NHS England so much and so negatively without any mention of how three million people in Wales are suffering from worse conditions.
It is no better when it comes to emergency care: May saw a third of patients wait over the four-hour target to be seen in A&E– one of the worst months for the Labour-run Welsh NHS on record.
The equivalent figure in England was 27%. After months of reaching similar figures to England, the equivalent figure in Scotland was only 13%. In its 13-year history the Welsh target to see 95% admissions within four hours has never been reached.
While life-threatening ambulance calls in England (called Category 1) were met on an average time similar to Wales (where they are called red calls), its Category 2 calls were responded to in half the time they were in Wales (amber calls) – 40 minutes compared to 78.
So how did we get to this point?
Well, firstly we have to remember that Wales was still the worse performing arm of the NHS before Covid struck – it recorded its worst A&E waits in 2019 and waiting times doubled in the year to March 2020.
Pandemic politicking is also to blame. Mark Drakeford and his Labour ministers were more concerned about looking serious and prudent in comparison to the UK Conservative government than they were with better outcomes.
Don’t forget that the Covid death-rate in Wales is higher than any other UK nation and the overreaction to Omicron needlessly deprived businesses of customers and citizens of their freedoms last Christmas. No wonder he has refused to commission a Wales-specific Covid inquiry – in contrast to one of his best mates, nationalist Nicola.
Another aspect is the failure of planning. By constantly being averse to returning to normality, a sense of denial emerged in Cardiff Bay, leading the then-Health Minister to reject Welsh Conservative calls for a recovery plan stating itwould be “foolish” to have an NHS recovery plan before the end of the pandemic, which Labour say is not yet over.
This attitude led to a delay that has meant proposals we made in Summer 2020 – like regionalsurgical hubs and rapid diagnostic centres – remain months from implementation, leading to the cataclysmic situation we are in now, whereas NHS England is already putting such programmes in motion under decisive Conservative direction.
Meanwhile, instead of getting on with the day job, Labour’s time and energy is drawn to their instincts to wage war against the public priorities, putting constitutional change and adding 36 more politicians to Cardiff Bay at a cost of £100m.
It is no surprise that stories of junior doctors working in Wales are filled with regrets and longing to return to England for better management and working conditions.
So rememberthat Labour’s mismanagement of the NHS is leading to worse outcomes for Welsh patients than those elsewhere in the UK; that it puts politics ahead of the welfare of the NHS; and the Conservative Party, in every part of the UK, offer solutions and actions that lead to improvement.
NHS Wales will celebrate its 75th anniversaryThanniversary, but if Labour continues down this path I worry about whether it will see its 100th.
Andrew RT Davies MS is Leader for the Welsh Conservatives
