How to shoot yourself in the foot

The Labour Party has made itself unelectable in Pembrokeshire. That may sound a bold claim but look at the evidence. Because of the ongoing threat to the Withybush hospital health is now the overriding issue in elections in the county. That was the case in the general election last year, even though Westminster does not run the health service in Wales. It will be even more so in the forthcoming National Assembly election on 5 May, given that the Welsh Government is directly responsible.

 

Yet another demo to save Withybush hospital, but Labour isn't listening

Yet for the past decade and more Welsh Labour has put itself on the wrong side of this bitter dispute. Which is extraordinary given its association with the provision of universal health care, free at the point of use. After all, it was Aneurin Bevan who founded the NHS.

So why has Labour lost the plot over the health service in Pembrokeshire? Dominated as it is by representatives from the Valleys and the urban areas, the Welsh Labour government has no feel for the problems of rural Wales. They have little idea what it is like to travel for long distances, often in poor weather and on poor roads clogged with holiday or farm traffic, to reach a hospital in an emergency.

Their priority is for what you might call technocratic solutions. They’re concerned to ensure consultants get a sufficient throughput of patients to enable them to maintain their skills and attract junior staff. They are concerned, too, with recruitment problems and ensuring that hospitals are updated with the latest kit. I’m not saying that such issues are not important, of course they are. But they should be secondary to the needs of the patients the NHS is there to care for. And the overriding priority for patients in Pembrokeshire is quite simple. They want to know that in an emergency they can reach their hospital in time to receive the treatment they need.

The fact is that, under a Labour administration, consultant-led maternity and paediatric care has been centralised away from Withybush to Glangwili in Carmarthen. That is why thousands of people are signing petitions and attending demonstrations on the steps of the Senedd in Cardiff.

Labour knows this.  It’s the reason why they lost their two seats in Pembrokeshire back in 2007, both Preseli and Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire. But what can they do? Their Health Minister, the Cardiff AM Mark Drakeford said, as recently as a month ago, that he’s not going back on the decision to remove the services from Withybush.

So Labour in Pembrokeshire resort to weasel words. This is Dan Lodge, their newly adopted Assembly candidate in Preseli: “We are calling on the Health Board to bring back 24 hour paediatrics to Withybush”. But his Labour Government is responsible for taking them away.

This is Joyce Watson, Labour’s List AM for Mid and West Wales. She is encouraged by the good progress being made at Glangwili hospital, according to Labour’s news sheet Together for Wales. “Fewer babies are having to go to Swansea and staff are very positive about the changes,” it says. But Joyce, we’re not worried about mothers having to go to Swansea from Carmarthen to have their babies, we’re concerned about mothers having to travel from Pembrokeshire to Carmarthen.

Labour just don’t get it. That’s why they’re unelectable here in Pembrokeshire.

Tory split threatens Pembrokeshire in the EU

Ian Duncan Smith - "crocodile tears"

In the best part of a lifetime reporting on politics I cannot recall when a Conservative government was so bitterly divided. Ian Duncan Smith’s resignation last week was merely a surface manifestation of a fissure that runs deep through the party. I don’t buy Duncan Smith’s crocodile tears that his resignation was prompted by the proposed welfare cuts in the budget shambles. He has too much form of implementing cuts on the poorest in society over the past six years for that.

No, this was all about Europe. The headline in the Daily Express told you all you needed to know: “Tory split helps fight to free us from Brussels”. The Tory divisions are inevitably weakening the Yes side in the forthcoming referendum. Many voters still to make up their minds will undoubtedly take a lead from the Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer. Their authority has been unquestionably been undermined by the events of the last week. And to that extent the strength of those arguing to remain inside the EU has been weakened as well.

Certainly, Pembrokeshire stands to lose heavily if by some misfortune Britain was to vote to leave the EU. First in the firing line would be our farmers. Wales will benefit by £1.7 billion between now and 2020 by Common Agricultural Policy Payments that support more than 80 per cent of farms. Moreover, if we were to leave, farmers would face tariff barriers at the borders of the EU which accounts for nearly the whole of our beef and lamb exports.

As for tourism, so vital for the Pembrokeshire economy, we have benefited from investment in developments such as the coastal path, while European water directives have ensured cleaner waters and beaches around our coast.

The fact is that Wales benefits from EU membership more than any other part of the UK, and within Wales our western rural areas and the Valleys benefit most of all. Wales is due to receive more than £3 billion of EU investment between 2014 and 2020, while Welsh exports to the EU will be worth in the region of £5.4 million.

Few would argue against dualling the 23 miles of the A40 between St Clears and Haverfordwest. It was proposed a decade ago but was put on ice by the Labour government in Cardiff which had other priorities. The only improvement since then has been the Robeston Wathen by-pass, completed in 2011 at a cost of £41.4 million. This was hugely necessary and indeed was first promised as long as the 1950s. The by-pass cut out an acute bottleneck in the village itself and removed an accident blackspot at Canaston Bridge. The European Convergence Fund contributed £20 million, nearly half the cost. Without it I very much doubt whether the by-pass would have been built. It’s just another example of how continued EU membership is so vital to Pembrokeshire’s interests.

Council led by a bunch of Tories

There was a photograph of a shiny new BMW for Pembrokeshire’s senior councillors on the front page of the Pembrokeshire Herald last week. Some might say this was a cheap shot coming at the same time as the council was announcing spending cuts and a council tax increase for 2016-17. I say it is evidence, if any is really needed, that the council is led by a bunch of Tories.

 

Pembrokeshire county council's new chauffeur-driven BMW

The council blames the Welsh Government for the spending cuts and the council tax rise. They say they’ve been forced to make them because the Welsh Government has ring-fenced minimal levels of spending to protect education and social care at the expense of other services. “If this continues over the long term, there would come a point where the Council could only afford to fund Social Care and Schools,” the Council’s Cabinet warned.

However, in the budget it set for the coming year, the council still hit social care the hardest. Of the total £10,971,000 cuts to its overall services, social care will bear nearly half. Adult social services will be hit most with residential care for older people, home care and day care services facing £3m cuts. That is to say, the most vulnerable people in Pembrokeshire will take the biggest hit.

This reflects the values of our, in effect, Tory led council. Indeed, the decision fitted very well with this week’s UK budget when George Osborne reduced subsidies for aids and appliances for disabled people, saving £1.2 billion, at the same time as raising the tax thresholds for the better off.

The attitude of Pembrokeshire council’s Tories became clear in last week’s budget debate when they voted against signing up to the Time to Care charter. Promoted by the Unison union, this aims to improve the employment standards of carers, particularly in ensuring they are paid at the right amount and for the actual time they spend working, including time travelling from one client to another.

The proposal followed research in Pembrokeshire which found great deficiencies in the service being provided. Researchers said continuity of client-carer relationship was hard to maintain because clients do not see the same carers regularly. There are concerns, too, about the standard of care. In particular the requirement that carers should spend no more 15 minutes with each client is too rigid. It undermines the professionalism of the carer and the dignity of the client.

Jamie Adams, leader of the ruling Independent Group, has conceded that it is within the council’s authority to sign up to the charter. But surprise, surprise, he said it would drive up wage levels and so cost too much. This is despite the fact that many carers are on the minimum wage.

 The vote against signing up for the Charter was only carried by a narrow majority. The ruling Independent Group needed the votes of the couple of card carrying “formal” Tory councillors to secure a majority, against the combined opposition of the Plaid and Labour groups and the rather comically entitled group of “independent Independents”. All this is why, I say again, Pembrokeshire county council is led by a bunch of Tories whose instinct is always to favour the better off against the most vulnerable in our community. I hope they enjoy their new BMW in the time they have left. There will be council elections next year.

Daisy leads the way in saving Withybush

Two-month-old Daisy Bamford was suffering from a viral infection, bronchitis, and hypothermia when her parents took her to Withybush hospital a week before Christmas. She needed an operation to assist with her breathing, but the hospital did not have an anaesthetist available with sufficient paediatric experience. The decision was taken that Daisy should go to Glangwili in Carmarthen.

 

Daisy as she is today (aged 5 months) with brothers Freddie (one-and-a-half) and Elijah (five)

The problem was that a specialist intubation ambulance was needed to make the journey. The nearest available one, run by a private company, is based in Bristol. This ambulance serves the whole of southwest Britain, from Oxfordshire and covers southern Wales and the southwest of England. It took six hours for it to reach Daisy in Haverfordwest.

The ambulance contains the facilities and specialist medical staff to undertake an emergency endotracheal intubation operation if that becomes necessary – that’s the insertion of a tube through the baby’s nose and into the windpipe to ensure a free flow of air. It’s a procedure that requires a good deal of experience to undertake effectively, especially on small children.

That became evident a week later. Daisy had recovered sufficiently to return home to Fishguard but suffered a relapse. Her parents rushed her to Withybush, to be met with the same situation. Again the required medical staff were not available and again Daisy had to be taken to Glangwili. But this time the specialist intubation ambulance took eight hours to arrive from Bristol.  The other difference was that this time Daisy needed emergency treatment on the way between Haverfordwest and Carmarthen.

All this was the result of the removal of 24-hour consultant-led paediatric cover from Withybush in August 2014. At the same time the special care baby unit and its consultants were taken away to Carmarthen. Outraged by their experience Daisy’s parents, Myles Bamford-Lewis and Jasmine McGinley, sprang into action. After Christmas they launched an on-line petition demanding the return of 24-hour paediatric cover to Withybush. The petition took off. In less than three months it received 20,557 signatures and these were presented to AMs on the steps of the Senedd in Cardiff on Tuesday this week. They undertook to give it to Health Minister Mark Drakeford.

Last week, I met with Steve Moore, Hywel Dda Health Board’s chief executive, together with Myles Bamford-Lewis and Simon Thomas, Plaid’s Mid and West Wales AM. Steve Moore wanted to hear Myle’s experience first hand and described it as “unacceptable”. He said they were doing all they could to restore 24-hour paediatric cover at Withybush. Its removal had been a mistake, he said.  “You can’t have a strong Accident and Emergency system unless you have 24 hour paediatric cover,” was the way he put it. “The loss of paediatric support in 2014 reduced the confidence of our Accident and Emergency staff and gave us challenges in recruiting new staff.” And he pointed out that within a week of losing 24-hour paediatric cover, Withybush also lost a number of trainee doctors.

I put it to Steve Moore that the same principle applied to provision of consultant-led maternity care at Withybush. And I told him that Plaid Cymru’s policy, to be announced in our manifesto for the National Assembly election, is for everyone in Wales to be within an hour’s reach of a hospital-based Accident and Emergency centre (the “golden hour”) and that would include on-site consultant obstetricians and gynacologists. It is our view that if a mother in childbirth is suddenly found to require a caesarian operation, then that is an emergency. Steve Moore heard what I said, and made no commitment. But at least he’s listening.