Welsh NHS cuts – no change of heart from Labour


Ronnie Job

Ed Miliband said, at Labour Party Wales Conference, that he wants the shadow cabinet to come to Wales and learn from the good things that the Welsh Government is doing. Whatever he is referring to, it can’t surely be their stewardship of the NHS in Wales?

With demos against NHS cuts across the country already this year, First Minister Carwyn Jones was forced to meet the North Wales Alliance.

But Jones insisted that the Welsh Government will not back down on their planned reforms – cuts to most of us.

The Alliance represents campaigns over local issues, like the threat to close a number of community hospitals or plans to scrap breast surgery at Llandudno, where the conference was held.

There is also a proposal to end specialist neonatal care in the whole of North Wales. The Alliance is looking at raising funds to mount a legal challenge to the Welsh Government on this issue.

But it’s not a matter of North versus South. Services are being cut everywhere; the South Wales Plan will mean four or five A&E units serving the whole of the Valleys and M4 corridor.

In May, the Wales TUC has an opportunity to put itself at the head of a campaign to defend the NHS in Wales in its entirety.

To do that they will have to overcome the ties of its leadership to a Labour Party carrying through Tory cuts.

We need a national demonstration as a first step towards creating an all-Wales campaign on the NHS that demands an end to all of Labour’s cuts.