The Welsh NHS has the longest waiting times in the UK, with over 20,000 patients waiting for more than two years to start treatment. Despite the Welsh Government's goal to eliminate two-year waits in most specialties by March 2023, this target was not met and seems unlikely to be achieved any time soon.
Waiting times are just the beginning of the problems. The Welsh NHS has suffered for too long under Welsh Labour policies, which have the wrong priorities and agenda.
One area of particular concern appears to be the shortage of qualified staff in diagnostic areas, such as medical physicists and clinical engineers. This shortage leads to delays in diagnosis and treatment for patients, as well as ongoing stress and pressure for the staff who are left to deal with the burden of the shortage.
One proposed solution is to increase Welsh NHS funding alongside improving science education to help create the specialists we need. However, the Welsh Government has chosen instead to allocate over £100 million for 36 more politicians and to water down science education by replacing the triple science award with a combined science GCSE, which many professional bodies have publicly spoken against due to the impact of students' ability to pursue further STEM study.
The private sector is used considerably by the Welsh NHS to fulfil contracts. GPs, dentists and pharmacists are all privately run businesses that hold NHS contracts. Another approach to improve waiting lists is to extend this to other areas such as audiology. I have spoken several times in the Senedd Chamber on this subject and asked the Health Minister to make this available to patients. However, the Welsh Government are resistant to this idea, despite its success in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Since Welsh Labour took control of Wales in 1999 and implemented different policies to the rest of the UK, there has been a steady decline in our economy, education standards and NHS and we frequently come bottom on all metrics when compared to other UK nations. The Welsh people are now paying the price of this decline and this is why the Welsh NHS finds itself in the state it is in.
I believe that to improve the Welsh NHS and reduce waiting times we need to first look at Welsh education, we need more money invested in science, more science teachers, better science facilities and we need more focus on helping Welsh children to develop careers in science so that we have more homegrown talent and become less reliant on specialists from elsewhere to fill vacancies.
ENDS
