This debate should mark a line in the sand. We’ve had numerous debates over the years about poor performance by Welsh Government on the NHS. I don’t think this is the first time, and it saddens me to say that it’s definitely not going to be the last. For decades—yes, decades—the Labour Government has been in charge of the NHS and it has been in a managed decline ever since.

I’m going to be sincere with the health Minister: she’s picked up a brief that has been decimated by the now economy Minister, who presided over five of the seven health boards in special measures and targeted intervention, who took Betsi out of special measures too early and as part of his political point scoring before the 2021 elections, who saw over a quarter of COVID deaths as a result of ward-to-ward transmission, and who opened the Grange hospital too early, leaving it painfully understaffed.

He took over from the now First Minister, who was in place when Betsi Cadwaladr was first put into special measures in 2015, after the shocking fallout of poor mental health care at Tawel Fan. Sadly, the situation is still playing out in other health boards, such as Cwm Taf, which has recently been pulled up by Healthcare Inspectorate Wales for discharging mental health patients without even bothering to contact the local community mental health team.

Minister, you do have my deepest sympathies. You haven’t got to grips with spiralling waiting lists over the last two years and you’ve failed to meet your targets. I can now see the panic that is setting in with you, Minister. You’re quite rightly worried about waiting lists that are stubbornly failing to significantly reduce, unlike in England. In my constituency of south-east Wales we’re looking at nearly 5,000 patient pathways waiting over two years for treatment in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. In Cwm Taf, this number doubles to over 10,000. That’s patients waiting in pain, in distress and frustration for over 105 weeks, 735 days, 17,520 hours. And it’s not just referral-to-treatment times that are out of control. Just over half—56 per cent—of patients at the Grange’s A&E were seen within four hours. One in five patients at the hospital are waiting for over 12 hours to be seen. In November 2022, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales declared that the A&E department at the Grange was in urgent need of improvement. This is despite the hospital being only two years old at the time. Is this acceptable in a flagship hospital?

I have a constituent who has laid bare the problems of your Government’s reorganisation of A&E services in Aneurin Bevan, relying on just one hospital, situated out in the back of beyond, to take the strain of health services in south-east Wales. They let me know their partner needed to go to hospital and, given no ambulances were available, despite the emergency, they drove to the Grange. On arriving, they found the waiting room full beyond its capacity, with relatives being told to go outside. During their lengthy wait, they saw patients who were being given infusions in every spare bit of space and they were told their partner couldn't be discharged due to a lack of bed space in other hospitals. Is this dignified care? Is this an NHS fit for the twenty-first century? I think not. 

Minister, we've given you the benefit of the doubt for the last two years and, yes, I wholeheartedly believe that you have inherited a really poor portfolio from your predecessors, being Mr Gething and Mr Drakeford. But you've taken so long to reach any decision: for example, you threatened Betsi with special measures in February 2022 if it continued to fail, and what happened? You saw services decline and still did nothing, even after a spate of Healthcare Inspectorate Wales reports that showed it wasn't managing. In Cwm Taf, things are going wrong—we have mental health services in crisis on top of the efforts to recover from the maternity scandal; no eating disorder target still; a lack of bereavement support services still and no support for adults diagnosed with ADHD still. These may just be drops in the ocean for you, Minister, and many others, but we're seeing through the warm words of support and lack of action, so are hard-pressed doctors and nurses, and so are patients. This is happening all over Wales and it's just not good enough, Minister. Enough is enough.