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John Bell, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Clwyd South has addressed the Welsh Conservative Party conference session on the NHS.
Speaking in Llandudno, John Bell said:
“I’m told that the older you get the more medical services you need and, as you can see, I’m not getting any younger.
When that day comes – many, many years from now – I want to be sure that I retain control over my life and any medical care I need.
I refuse to be told by politicians or bureaucrats where I should be treated or by whom.
I recall many years ago accompanying my Mother to the hospital out patients department. In those days everybody got the same appointments time.
She failed to hear her name being called and was given a dressing down by the nurse who obviously believed the hospital existed for her convenience not ours.
This attitude persisted for far too long and in certain quarters still does.
At best, the NHS does a superb job of taking care of us, but there still exists the institutional attitude that they are in some way doing us a favour by treating us.
This is exacerbated by this government’s obsession with central control and top-down targets which leads to the obscenity of Stafford hospital where patients took second place to bureaucracy.
The amount spent on administrative staff within the Welsh health service has risen nearly 20% since 1999.
The number of managers in the NHS is rising almost three times as fast as the number of nurses.
A decade of top-down, bureaucratic mismanagement has consistently undermined the professionalism and motivation of NHS staff and skewed NHS priorities away from patient care, creating a culture where ticking boxes is more important than giving patients the treatment they need.
It is simply not acceptable to have an NHS that puts targets before patients.
We are the party of the NHS today because we not only back the values of the NHS, we back its funding and we have a vision for its future.
The NHS belongs to the patients NOT the government or bureaucrats.
We demand that the government:
Frees NHS staff from the tyranny of their obsession with central control.
Frees them from top – down targets.
Frees them to do their job as their professional judgement guides them.
Free our NHS to Put Patients First.
Thank you.”
