In central Cardiff, on Queen Street, just opposite Cardiff Castle, a faded bronze statue of a man in a double breasted suit leans forward over passers by. The statue is of Aneurin Bevan, the Welshman and Labour Health Minister who founded the National Health Service. He was one of Wales’ most formidable politicians, and his health service was one of Wales’ greatest gifts to the United Kingdom.
If Nye Bevan could see what his party has done to the NHS in Wales, he would be turning in his grave.
Just a few miles away is the University Hospital of Wales, Wales’ biggest hospital. This month, a report found that criminal behaviour by staff had taken place in the hospital’s surgical department, including theft and illegal drugs. It found that anaesthetic practitioners were sometimes not in theatres for the entirety of operations, but were elsewhere on their phones or watching Netflix.
Netflix in surgery, drugs in staff rooms - welcome to Labour’s NHS nightmare - Andrew RT Davies
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Shockingly, it said there were several cases of pigeons being found in trauma theatres or in the theatre corridor. That is the kind of thing you would be shocked by if it happened in a healthcare setting in a third world country, let alone in Wales’ main hospital. But in Wales, we have become entirely desensitised to horrors in our NHS.
Thousands of people in Wales are waiting more than two years for NHS treatment. In England, waits of those lengths have been essentially eradicated. And one in four people in Wales in on an NHS waiting list.
That is the legacy of decades of uninterrupted Labour rule in Wales. And, frankly, parties like Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems, who have propped Labour up at crucial moments, and for crucial budget votes, have to carry some of the responsibility for this.
We’re told that Wes Streeting, the Labour UK Government’s Health Secretary, plans to dock the pay of failing NHS trust executives.
Mark Drakeford exploded when I put it to him that Aneurin Bevan would be turning in his grave over the state of the NHS in Wales.
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If that principle was applied to Labour Minister in Wales, the frontbench in the Senedd would be opening their payslips each month and seeing big fat zeroes. And this is an incredibly touchy subject for Labour Ministers.
When I put it to Mark Drakeford that Aneurin Bevan would be turning in his grave following a number of shocking ambulance waits that had been reported in the Welsh news, he exploded at me, foaming at the mouth, in a moment that became viral.
The regular stories we hear in Wales, of people left lying on their kitchen floors, in pain, waiting 15 hours for an ambulance, of young men lying in the rain for hours and hours, worried they might be paralysed, will become more commonplace in England if Labour continue to occupy Whitehall offices.
It is because they are so busy trying to change the country in an almost revolutionary way, that they get distracted.
In Wales, they’re so distracted by implementing outrageous ideological projects like a tourism tax, like the anti-racist Wales action plan, like default 20mph, that our NHS is an afterthought.
In England, we can expect the exact same distractions, which will lead to a worse health service for patients and for staff alike.
And our health services across the UK, far from being world-leading, will be that of a third world country.
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