Speaking during the virtual meeting of the Welsh Parliament, my colleague, Paul Davies MS, the Leader of the Opposition, questioned the First Minister over the Labour Welsh Government’s plans to tackle the growing backlog in diagnoses and referral-to-treatment times, which has seen potentially life-saving operations for cancer and other conditions put on hold for months.
Although increased waiting times were anticipated as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this includes unexpectedly high increases at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which released figures showing a 437% increase in people waiting longer than a year to receive treatment following a referral. As at 31st July this stood at 10,904, up from 2,496 in 2019.
As Paul Davies said later, “I expected the First Minister to have offered the reassurance people here in Wales need to end their anxiety over when they or their loved ones will receive a diagnosis and start their treatment, but it didn’t materialise”.
I highlighted the North Wales constituents who had recently contacted me detailing delays in Cancer Diagnostic Tests, blood tests and ‘non-urgent’ operations, and contrasting this with the experience of friends in England.
Our Health Board already had the worst waiting time figures in Wales before this pandemic and it is now in the sixth year of Welsh Government special measures.
I visited Hanmer Surgery for a socially distanced meeting with the Practice’s GP and Patients Action Group to discuss their well-evidenced proposal to Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board for the development of a new Primary Healthcare Centre.
Tenants need the security of a good home and a responsible landlord. Most landlords are individuals who let out one or two properties, many of whom rely on that income for their day to day living expenses or to provide pensions. I therefore called for greater understanding by the Labour Welsh Government of the need to protect both tenants and landlords – particularly given people’s increasing dependency on the private-rented sector for housing and the damaging effect the Covid-19 pandemic has had on it.
Online meetings included a construction company that predominately provides affordable homes, to discuss the problems faced by those trying to improve the delivery of social housing in Wales; the Stroke Association, to discuss the dramatic effect that Covid-19 has had on stroke survivors in North Wales and how stroke services in Wales already needed change before the pandemic began; and NWAMI, ‘Networking for World Awareness of Multicultural Integration’, International Group.
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