Senedd rejects calls to declare health emergency

The Senedd narrowly rejected calls to declare a health emergency as the Conservatives warned NHS Wales is in the worst state it has ever been.

James Evans pointed out that nearly one in five people are waiting for treatment, with more than 250,000 people waiting more than nine months for care.

Leading a Tory debate on July 2, the shadow health secretary told the Senedd more than 100,000 people in Wales wait more than 12 hours in A&E each month.

Mr Evans said: “While they wait, ambulances queue outside, unable to offload patients, tying up paramedics who should be on the road saving lives. The ambulance service has not hit its target for eight-minute response times for life-threatening calls for four years straight.”

He warned GP services are overwhelmed, NHS dentistry is collapsing and mental health services are also in crisis. “If that’s not an emergency, I do not know what is,” he said.

‘Shameful’

Mabon ap Gwynfor, Plaid Cymru’s shadow health secretary, supported the Tory motion, pointing out that his party made calls to declare a health emergency in February 2024.

He said since then: “Waiting lists have broken records another nine times, and every one of the seven regional health boards has stayed in special measures of one kind or another.”

Describing Labour’s record over the past 26 years as unacceptable, Mr ap Gwynfor accused ministers of changing targets on a whim and refusing to admit failure.

The Conservatives’ Natasha Asghar criticised “shameful” treatment times in Wales. She said: “If anything, things continue to go from bad to worse under Labour’s watch and, perhaps more worryingly, failure… to turn things around seems to end in promotion.

“Mark Drakeford, Vaughan Gething and Eluned Morgan all presided over the health brief, failed to deliver successful results and ended up being First Minister.”

‘Failing’

Her colleague Gareth Davies, who worked in the north Wales NHS for a decade, told the Senedd: “We just cannot go on like this. The Welsh Government has declared a nature and climate emergency; we now need to declare a health emergency in Wales.

“Unlike the trendy nature and climate emergencies championed by the establishment, this crisis lacks glamour but demands urgent action and means more preventable deaths, prolonged suffering and eroded trust in the NHS….

“Declaring a health emergency is an honest admission that the system is failing and that extraordinary measures are needed.”

Labour’s Carolyn Thomas told the Senedd the NHS has often been ranked among the best health care systems in the developed world. “We must value it,” she said.

Pointing to the impact of the pandemic on waiting lists and Tory austerity, which “tore at the fabric of society”, the former councillor said: “I refuse to talk down our wonderful NHS.”

‘Favourite sport’

Jeremy Miles accused the opposition of only seeing the worst in the health service and indulging in their “favourite sport” of political football, “kicking the NHS from pillar to post”.

Hitting back at his opposite number, the health secretary said: “I heard the Conservative health spokesman say… ‘if that’s not an emergency, I don’t know what is’.

“Let me tell him what a health emergency is – it’s Covid, it’s mpox, it’s war, it’s terrorism.

“And the public will look at this debate and see that in it – shamefully, on a matter of such importance – it’s driven by a slogan and not by substance.”

Senedd Members voted 26-24 against the Tory motion before agreeing the Welsh Government’s amended version by the same margin.