The latest NHS statistics for Wales revealed NHS treatment waiting lists remain at 789,929 pathways, the equivalent of nearly 1-in-4 Welsh people.
Two-year NHS waits for treatment have risen again to 9,600 in Wales – an almost 15% rise from the previous month, compared with only 171 in England. The Labour Health Minister, now First Minister, Eluned Morgan promised to eliminate these waits for the last two years (by March 2023 and again by March 2024), but failed to meet these targets and still has not.
Commenting on the latest statistics, James Evans MS, Welsh Conservative Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care said:
“Labour is proving in real time that their health strategy is failing abysmally. Progress is in reverse.
“It’s clear that shovelling taxpayers’ money at the waiting list crisis isn’t enough. You need a substantial workforce plan, you need a cancer action plan and you need a whole-of-government approach.
“No one should even be waiting over a year for treatment. That’s why the Welsh Conservatives would declare a health emergency, to ensure that resources and the efforts of the whole Government are targeted at reducing these excessive waits.”
“We’ll believe it when we see it”
The Welsh Government are publicising their ‘Planned Care Recovery plan’, setting out ambitions to:
- Reduce the overall size of the waiting list by 200,000.
- Eliminate all two-year waits.
- ‘Restore the diagnostic wait times to be reduced’ to under 8 weeks by March 2026.
The Welsh Conservatives have expressed doubt, given the Welsh Labour Government’s propensity to promise waiting list reductions every year, repeatedly lowering the bar each time, only to repeatedly miss key targets.
Commenting on Labour’s ‘ambition’ to eliminate two-year waits and reduce the overall list by 200,000, James Evans MS, Welsh Conservative Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care said:
“We’ll believe it when we see it. Though Labour is setting the bar lower and lower, only to fall short year after year.
“The First Minister first promised to eliminate two-year waits when she was the Health Minister over two years ago, yet you’re still five hundred times more likely to wait over two years on a waiting list in Wales than in England. Now it’s only Labour’s ‘ambition’ to eliminate long waits.
“The Welsh Conservatives are clear, no one should even be waiting a year for treatment. We can achieve this by declaring a health emergency and ensuring that sufficient resources and the entire apparatus of Government is directed at the NHS and away from costly vanity projects.”
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