Monday, April 11, 2011
Rewriting history
This morning's Western Mail has the first of a series of articles by the main parties' health spokesperson explaining their health pledges. To start off they have opted for Helen Mary Jones of Plaid Cymru whose piece is full of a rather predictable repetition:
Plaid in government will roll out our programme of community wellbeing centres, with a cross-section of different health and care professionals directly employed by health boards, providing a range of services tailored to meet that particular community’s needs.
Plaid in government will offer all adults an annual health check to aid early detection and to support citizens to take charge of our own health and wellbeing.
Cancer care is one area where we know world-class services in some areas contrast sharply with delays and under- performance in others. Plaid in government will not tolerate this. We will develop a national cancer plan to ensure consistent, patient-centred services across our nation.
And so on. What appears to have been missed here is that Plaid Cymru are in government and have been for the last four years. A number of these pledges were in the One Wales Agreement but were not delivered.
With Cancer, dementia and heart disease all more likely to be fatal in Wales than across the border, and with Wales lagging behind Scotland in approving requests for one-off funding of life-extending cancer drugs, whilst more than 20 drugs not available here are being funded by the UK Government in England wouldn't an apology have been an appropriate part of this article?
The fact is that Plaid Cymru in Government has already failed our health service. Their state of denial on that failure does not exactly give us confidence that we should offer them a second chance.
Plaid in government will roll out our programme of community wellbeing centres, with a cross-section of different health and care professionals directly employed by health boards, providing a range of services tailored to meet that particular community’s needs.
Plaid in government will offer all adults an annual health check to aid early detection and to support citizens to take charge of our own health and wellbeing.
Cancer care is one area where we know world-class services in some areas contrast sharply with delays and under- performance in others. Plaid in government will not tolerate this. We will develop a national cancer plan to ensure consistent, patient-centred services across our nation.
And so on. What appears to have been missed here is that Plaid Cymru are in government and have been for the last four years. A number of these pledges were in the One Wales Agreement but were not delivered.
With Cancer, dementia and heart disease all more likely to be fatal in Wales than across the border, and with Wales lagging behind Scotland in approving requests for one-off funding of life-extending cancer drugs, whilst more than 20 drugs not available here are being funded by the UK Government in England wouldn't an apology have been an appropriate part of this article?
The fact is that Plaid Cymru in Government has already failed our health service. Their state of denial on that failure does not exactly give us confidence that we should offer them a second chance.
