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.