It was an honour to deliver the opening address at the launch event, held in North Wales, of ‘Out of Sight’, an anthology of poetry about mental health by members of Disability Arts Cymru, with readings by the poets. Having seen poems by their members about their experiences with mental health and illness, Disability Arts Cymru decided to publish a small anthology early in 2018 in order to continue to draw attention to how important mental health is to their work. They put out a call for submissions in Autumn 2017 and ‘Out of Sight’ is the result.
As a member of the Assembly External Affairs Committee, I joined a Committee working trip to Brussels for a busy day of seven Brexit-focused meetings. As the next phase of UK-EU negotiations move forward, we heard that a better understanding of mutual economic interests was developing, with, for example, 10%-15% of the GDP of Germany’s 16 states exposed to the UK market, and therefore of the need to reach a position which recognises the requirement for a special and different solution for future EU-UK trade arrangements.
Following news that NHS Wales A&E waiting times in February were the worst since records began in 2009, and that North Wales’ Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board was the worst performing, with only 70.1% of patients being seen within 4 hours and 11.1% having to wait over 12 hours, came the news that the Labour-run Welsh NHS is set to record its biggest single-year deficit ever. Four Welsh Health Boards will have overspent by a combined total of almost £163m, with Betsi Cadwaladr, which is in special measures and has been under direct control of the Welsh Government for the past two and a half years, seeing its overspend rise to £36m. Patients and staff are paying the price for cuts and long-term planning failures by the Labour Welsh Government. Despite Welsh Government claims that it spends more on health per head than is spent in England, they remain the only Government in the UK to have ever cut expenditure on health in real terms, down 0.3% between 2010 and 2016 as it rose 3.7% in Scotland, 4.3% in Northern Ireland and 9% in England. They say that they are spending 8% more on health and social care per head than in England, but they received an additional 20% more per head to spend in these areas from the UK Treasury.
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