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Peredur Owen Griffiths, who represents Plaid Cymru, is one of four regional Senedd Members serving the South Wales East region.

For anyone who has been to hospital recently, the sight of ambulances queuing up outside A&E will be a familiar one. I was at The Grange, the flagship hospital built outside Cwmbran at a cost of £370m recently and counted seven ambulances waiting outside.

Most people who have had to request an emergency ambulance will also be familiar with a long wait and the feelings of desperation and frustration this can cause. When a loved one is in pain and needs to go to hospital, even a short delay can seem like an eternity but people are routinely being asked to wait seven hours or more for a crew to arrive.

It was therefore not too much of a surprise when I got figures back from the Welsh Ambulance Service showing the scale of the problem of lost ambulance crew time outside The Grange Hospital. Every month, crews are spending more than 2,000 hours waiting outside. It is no wonder that people are being asked to wait for unacceptable lengths of time in an emergency when crews are tied up outside hospitals. This is unfair on patients as well as the ambulance and hospital staff who bear the brunt of the frustration from patients and their families.

In plenary this week, I called on the Labour Government in Wales to order a review into this unacceptable situation. While the actions of Westminster do have a bearing on health matters this side of the border – especially in terms of funding – the Labour Government have been responsible for running the NHS in Wales since the advent of devolution of 1999. They have to take some responsibility for the unacceptable waits that patients are forced to ensure and the tough conditions frontline NHS staff have to put up with. Having spoken with members of the Royal College of Nursing recently I know that morale is low and that good, experienced nurses are leaving the profession in their droves. Despite that, there is no national staff retention programme from the Labour government which seems like a glaring omission.

Wales gave the NHS to the rest of the UK. Universal healthcare free at the point of need is an integral part of any compassionate and caring society. The NHS is precious, is much cherished and we must be on guard for anything which threatens its existence. That is why the Labour Government needs to get a grip of these unacceptable bottlenecks in the system ahead of the inevitable winter pressures. Without remedying the significant roadblocks in the system, staff will be placed under unbearable pressure and patients will also be left waiting and suffering.         

In the past month I have also been concerned by the development at Valleys Greyhounds in Ystrad Mynach, which is the only dog track left in Wales. A significant sum of cash is being invested into this facility with a view to increasing the frequency of races in the coming years.

In the Senedd, I have called for this sport to be banned in Wales on the grounds of the harm it causes to greyhounds. The figures supplied by animal welfare charities on the injuries sustained by dogs at this one track alone are shocking. I have written to Caerphilly County Borough Council to see what inspection regime they are conducting at the track given they are responsible for licensing it as it is an independent ‘flapper’ track.

I will update constituents with the council’s response through my social media as soon as I receive it.

Finally, it was great to see Plaid Cymru’s long-standing policy of creating an energy company for Wales come closer to fruition in the last week because of the co-operation agreement we have struck with the Welsh Government. The aim is for this to be a publicly owned energy company for Wales that will help us realise our potential as an energy rich nation whose resources benefit the people, not multinational exporters. The volatility of the energy market over the last two years shows how important this could be for our country.