FOLLOWING Sir Keir Starmer’s statement that the NHS in Wales needed urgent reform and the First Minister’s comment that reforming it needed to wait until waiting lists came down, The Herald asked both Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Conservatives how they would reform the NHS in Wales within the existing devolved settlement.
Both of Wales’s principal opposition parties have spoken of the need to reform the NHS, so we asked for their concrete proposals to turn things around.
Our request to both parties was identical: what changes are needed, how they will be paid for, and what the benefits of those changes would be.
Disappointingly, despite its Health spokesperson’s statement that the NHS in Wales needed reform and despite promising an answer to our request, Plaid Cymru remains silent.
The Welsh Conservatives, in contrast, responded quickly.
ENDING THE BLAME GAME
With the release of the Darzi report, we should discuss as politicians how best to improve outcomes for patients in Wales, not who best to blame, writes the Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister Sam Rowlands MS.
And that discussion starts with funding.
The Labour Welsh Government funds the health service, but it still doesn’t pass on every penny it receives in consequential funding as a result of health spending in England, worth £1.20 for every £1 spent.
In fact, the Welsh NHS budget has been cut in real terms not once, not twice, but three times over the years. Labour in Wales is the only government in the UK to have ever done so.
But the people of Wales rightly don’t just want to see the money shovelled into a flawed system.
People want to see value for money.
The Welsh Conservatives would use that additional investment to boost staffing numbers by making NHS professions more attractive.
We plan to refund the tuition fees for healthcare workers who stay and work in Wales for at least five years after their studies, an effective wage-boosting tax cut for NHS staff.
We want to see an end to the NHS’s reliance on extortionate agency staffing companies, which blow huge holes in hospital budgets.
Nearly a quarter of a billion pounds was spent last year on agency staff that cost significantly more per head than permanent staff.
The Welsh Conservatives have proposed a more meaningful and rapid rollout of surgical hubs and diagnostic centres and the introduction of care hotels staffed by NHS reservists to ease the pressure on our hospitals.
Sadly, these ideas have fallen on deaf ears as Labour ministers in the Senedd prioritise vanity projects like creating more politicians.
Primary care is absolutely paramount.
The Labour Welsh Government has failed to adequately fund our GP surgeries to such an extent that one hundred of them have closed in the last 12 years, in spite of increased demand.
This is unacceptable
The Welsh Conservatives have brought forward Senedd motions to address this issue, which have included calls to adopt the British Medical Association’s Save our Surgeries campaign.
Lord Darzi’s report highlighted the fact that 13% of NHS beds in England are occupied by people waiting for social care support.
While Lord Darzi didn’t examine Wales, his findings regarding the social care bottleneck do apply here and have been echoed by Healthcare Inspectorate Wales in their most recent annual report, as well as by the very NHS managers criticised by the First Minister.
Suppose we don’t tackle the social care backlog. In that case, we’ll never cut waiting lists, and we’ll be leaving more and more people languishing in discomfort in hospitals when they would be better cared for in the community.
The way we do that is by backing our carers and social care workers, again making the profession far more attractive than it is now and establishing a cross-party commission that will bind the Welsh Government by its outcomes.
Welsh Conservatives believe in delivering the NHS that Wales deserves. They believe the way to do this is by finally setting bold, ambitious targets and sticking to them – no more passing the buck as Labour and Baroness Morgan do.
