Mark Isherwood
Speaking in this week’s Assembly Debate on Welsh Labour Policy Performance during its15 years in Government in Wales, North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood criticised the Welsh Government for denying Wales the independent inquiry into standards of care within the Welsh NHS which the UK Government has delivered for the English NHS, and for the housing supply crisis which has developed in Wales during Labour’s 15 years in power.
He said the Official Opposition was holding Carwyn Jones’ Labour Government to account “because Wales deserves so much better”.
“The Welsh Labour Government target for ambulance handover time of less than 15 minutes was missed more than 17,000 times at just two north Wales hospitals last year. The British Medical Association Cymru states that general practice in North Wales is in crisis.
“Only this week, the Royal College of Nursing in Wales warned that hospitals in Wales face a shortage of qualified nurses, which could compromise patient care.
“A Rhyl resident e-mailed: ‘As an ex-Stafford Hospital patient, I can say without a shadow of doubt that NHS Wales is not another Stafford about to happen; it is another Stafford happening right now.’
“A Flintshire resident wrote: ‘I was told that, had I been a patient from England, the operation would have been carried out within 18 weeks from the consultation date in January. However, as I am a patient from Wales, I will be required to wait at least 36 weeks. These discriminatory arrangements highlight what the Prime Minister has been saying about the two-tier NHS in England and Wales.
“A North Wales nurse told me last week that after she had made a complaint, ‘They tried to break the person making the complaint, to make it go away as if it never happened. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it’. Again, she said, ‘It’s like Stafford’.”
“During the first 12 devolution years, the Labour Welsh Government cut the supply of new homes for social rent in Wales by almost three quarters, and the number of homes for social rent in Wales by 29,000 as waiting lists and overcrowding increased. Although new home registrations in the UK rose 28% last year, Wales was the only part of the UK to see a fall, and the numbers fell again in Wales during the first quarter of this year, but not around the rest of the UK.
“As CLA Cymru states in its ‘Tackling the Housing Crisis in Wales’ report: ‘At a time of housing supply crisis, we must not compromise condition and standards, but neither must they become a barrier to housing more people’.”
