calls from the British Medical Association for a full-scale independent investigation into Welsh NHS services and calls upon the Welsh Government to commission such an investigation as soon as possible.
Janet Finch-Saunders:I remind my colleague that it was in fact the Labour Government that gave us the massive deficit facing the United Kingdom, the same deficit that your leader forgot to mention in his speech, and this is a man who wants to lead our country—I think not.
In putting together my contribution today, even I was shocked just how easy it is to find reference to the problems facing our health service here in Wales. Type ‘health service in Wales’ into Google and the third entry reads,
‘Doctors warn: Welsh NHS faces “imminent meltdown” amid call for inquiry into nation's health service’.
Yes, that is from the British Medical Council. Another entry, dated only last December reads,
‘Wales health: Challenging year for the NHS’,
stating that,
‘It is under intense pressure, with services being reorganised, financial constraints acute and many targets being missed throughout the year.’
It goes on to describe the demand, stating that this year the Welsh NHS has ‘struggled to cope’ with ‘hospitals overwhelmed’, ambulances queued up and ‘hundreds of planned operations’ cancelled. It states that the Minister at that time took over a service ‘lurching from crisis to crisis’.
Mick Antoniw:Thank you for taking the intervention. So, when, a couple of months ago, you made the same allegations and the BMA described them as a ‘wicked slander’, do you agree with that?
Janet Finch-Saunders:With respect to my colleague, the BMA said
‘The Welsh Assembly Government shows that they have got no respect for clinicians working in sub-standard conditions and managing avalanching workloads’.
Another quote is:
‘I feel very saddened and deeply frustrated by the current quality or lack of healthcare services in Wales and lack of recognition by the Welsh Government of any of the issues.
That is directly from the coalface.
Type in ‘health service inquiry Wales’ or even ‘health service scandal Wales’ and, as my colleague Byron Davies has said, you will find the name, Lilian Williams, bless her, who was 82 years old and died at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend. In May 2014, there were high mortality rates at six sites and an e-mail written by Bruce Keogh and concerns about officials and their attempts to suppress that e-mail.
Eric Ward, described by his wife as being offered only half the food that he needed. She had to release a photo of his skeletal frame after he sadly passed away. Labour MP, Ann Clwyd, had to complain after her husband died ‘like a battery hen’ at the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff. Furthermore, the Assembly Member for Aberconwy felt very desperate during a recent bank holiday, desperately seeking help from you, Minister, because a very sick constituent of mine was desperate for a bladder cancer removal. Facing delay after delay, promise after promise and let-down after let-down, that constituent gradually became so weak that by the time that the operation took place, he was further diagnosed with secondary tumours and, a matter of weeks later, he died. As his family said, ‘He had simply had enough’.
Another gentleman wrote to me, describing how the love of his life, his dear wife, who, although allergic to Penicillin and having mentioned this on five separate occasions to nursing staff, was administered this drug and sadly experienced severe organ failure. Not only had he to cope with the grief and the loss, but, as the coroner became involved, it was a matter of many weeks before he could even arrange for her funeral. These cases are terribly tragic, but they are real-life circumstances. This is not scaremongering.
We have had mortality data, horrific evidence, protests and Labour Government apologies. The BMA cannot be wrong; Ann Clwyd cannot be wrong; the north Wales patient watchdog and Professor Keogh himself, and the Royal College of Surgeons and the College of Emergency Medicine cannot all be wrong. Certainly the BMA cannot be wrong.
Your monthly cancer waiting-time target has not been met in any single month for over 70 months, and there is no prospect that you are actually doing anything to succeed in reducing these targets. In our recent patient round-table discussion with cancer patients, it became clear that they had gone to doctors and GPs numerous times before they were sent for diagnosis. Our A&E departments are stretched beyond belief. No patient should be forced to wait for more than four or 12 hours to be treated in an emergency department, but that is the reality for many vulnerable people. It should be a matter of shame for Carwyn Jones and your Government that these targets have not been met once during the last five years. Your Welsh Labour Government simply must get to grips with the crisis in Welsh emergency care and throughout our health service. You must reverse the record-breaking NHS budget cuts. You must halt the current dangerous hospital closure and centralisation programme, and you should take the honourable step of admitting defeat and allow an inquiry to take place.