Chair, conference - Conservatives believe in choice and what a clear choice is facing the people of Wales in May's Assembly elections.
A Welsh Conservative Assembly Government will protect the NHS budget in Wales. No buts, no excuses, no exceptions.
The NHS is the Number 1 priority of the people of Wales and let there be no doubt - it is my number 1 priority too. This is the choice we have made.
This is not an easy policy. But it is the right policy. Yes Wales has to play its part in clearing up the economic mess left by the previous UK Labour Government.
And yes, as in the rest of the UK this means cuts - Labour's cuts. But the Labour-Plaid Assembly Government claim that they have no choice other then to cut the NHS. What rubbish. What a barefaced lie.
Yesterday the Chancellor made it clear they can protect the health budget. They have the money to do so.
They do have a clear choice and the people of Wales have a clear choice, a choice between Labour-Plaid plans to cut 1 billion pounds from the health service over the next three years and Welsh Conservative plans to protect our NHS in Wales, in real terms – in line with inflation.
Labour-Plaid say that Wales can't afford to protect the NHS. They're wrong - the truth is Wales can't afford NOT to protect the NHS.
Now, I’m an optimist and thankfully there’s good news too.
Huge advances are being made every day in new treatments for previously untreatable conditions but these inevitably come with a price tag and sadly many of these treatments are not being prescribed in Wales.
All too often cancer patients have seen medicines turned down by NICE solely on grounds of cost, when they could make a significant difference to people’s survival chances.
This is why we would introduce a £10 million Welsh Cancer Drugs Fund.
That Welsh fund will give Welsh patient equitable access to drugs in Wales and will be paid for through reducing waste in the medicines budget and through the Party’s commitment to protect the NHS budget.
A Cancer fund is going to protect patients in England. It can protect patients here in Wales, it should and under our plans it most certainly would.
Now, when I was offered the job of taking on Edwina Hart at the end of last year, a number of thoughts went through my head. Not all of them are repeatable to a family audience!
It’s a huge brief and half of the Assembly’s overall budget. If the Labour-Plaid Assembly Government can’t get heath right, then to be honest it can’t get anything right.
I will say this for Edwina Hart – she’s not one to shy away from changing things. All the time, whenever she can, whether it’s a good or bad, whatever clinicians think.
Often it seems simply for the sake of it, so long as she is in control. Back in 2003 the Assembly Government told us that the solution was 22 Local health Boards.
Of course, that didn’t work. Just 5 years later and the we were told that 22 LHBS were the problem and that 7 new health boards integrated with the Trusts would drag the NHS in Wales kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.
Welsh Health boards have been shuffled round faster than deckchairs on the Titanic.
And what has followed?
The improvements we were promised?
No, nothing short of a Winter of Discontent for our health service.
Ambulance Response Times down. Flu Vaccine uptake rates down. Hospital Dental Staff Down And waiting times down?
No, you guessed it – Waiting Times well and truly up.
More than a tenth of people in Wales waiting for treatment.
It has been truly a Winter of Discontent for our NHS.
And to cap it all, hospital pest infestations up.
Health Board have reported over 700 cases of pest infestation since 2007.
One hospital alone has dealt with 272 cases of vermin since 2007, in areas including wards, theatres and A&E.
One hospital has dealt with 171 cases over the last four years, in areas like chemotherapy and cancer care.
And over this period, the number of maintenance and works staff in the Welsh NHS has gone down.
We’ve long said there are too many bureaucrats crawling around in the Welsh Health Service and now it seems there are too many rats too.
This is no way to run a modern NHS, it’s no way to run a modern anything. It’s time for new thinking in the NHS in Wales.
It’s time we listened more to what doctors and nurses say need to be done and less to what the bureaucrats think.
Because they have been consistently wrong in their answers and our NHS needs those answers today more than ever.
It needs those answers in all areas. Take stroke services. It’s scandalous that people who suffer a stroke in Wales are more likely to die or end up with severe disabilities than those in England.
But improvements will not be made without dedicated and specialised stroke units, with all the latest technology, nurses, scanners and beds on site, in order to provide people with world-class care in their greatest hour of need.
Yes, better stroke services will cost money.
That is why we would scrap Labour’s absurd policy of free prescriptions for millionaires and we would put that money into front-line stroke services where it can make a real difference for so many people in our country.
The time for Labour’s dogmatic running of the NHS is over.
This Assembly Government has failed to protect our NHS on the one hand, whilst wasting millions of pounds on the other – not my words but those of the Chief Executive of the NHS in Wales who said that a billion pounds was being misspent in the health service.
This was symbolised by the meaningless, re-branding of Health Boards in Wales which saw the old Gwent Trust re-branded as the Aneurin Bevan Health Board.
Well I think Nye Bevan would be spinning in his grave if he knew what his Labour-Plaid successors have done with his legacy. And I think he would probably appreciate the choice available to the Welsh people in May’s election.
The choice between a century of failed one party domination, a failed model of centralisation, bureaucracy and ministerial interference or a more flexible system with more freedom, more money and more choice.
It’s a big choice that has the potential to create a future, bigger Welsh society.
And it is the choice we and only we are giving the people of Wales in May.
Thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr iawn