At First Minister’s Questions (FMQs) today in the Senedd, Paul Davies MS highlighted the record-breaking Welsh NHS waiting lists, now at over 800,000 pathways, having increased to new record highs for ten consecutive months.
In response, Labour First Minister, Eluned Morgan said:
“Let me tell you about waiting lists. The diagnostic waits in Wales are going down, the therapies are going down.
“And do you know what? They don’t even count those in England. They’re not even counted in the statistics. So we’re being far more honest with the public about what is going on in Wales.”
The First Minister having seemingly forgotten that Keir Starmer’s UK Labour Government have been publishing NHS England statistics for seven months, tarring them with a brush of implied dishonesty.
Moreover, the First Minister’s claim appears untrue. The NHS England website publishes referral to treatment waiting times, of which diagnostic waiting times are said to be “a key part”
Commenting after the exchange in the Senedd, Welsh Conservatives Shadow Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution and External Affairs, Paul Davies MS said:
“The Welsh Labour Government should be ashamed of their record on the NHS, waiting lists are hitting successive record highs month after month.
“But the First Minister’s response was shocking. She attempted to defend her record by implying that her Labour colleagues in Westminster were dishonest in their counting of the figures, a woeful excuse.
“Instead of passing the buck and threatening to make cuts to the Welsh NHS as both the First Minister and the Finance Secretary have done, Labour needs to be getting to grips with the longest waiting lists in the whole UK.”
