NHS in Wales has highest dissatisfaction rate in UK – new poll

Emily Price

The Welsh Government has been criticised after a new poll found that the NHS in Wales has the highest dissatisfaction rate in the UK.

The Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund join forces each year to analyse and present findings from a survey of public attitudes and opinions towards the NHS and social care.

The survey asked a nationally representative sample of 2,945 adults over the age of 18 across Wales, England and Scotland about their satisfaction with the NHS and adult social care services.

The sample sizes for the three countries were 2,519 in England, 225 in Scotland, and 201 in Wales.

The results published on Wednesday (April 2) show that the British public are “deeply unhappy” with the way the NHS is run.

The poll revealed that people in Wales are most dissatisfied with the NHS at 72% – compared with 59% in England and 60% in Scotland.

This held true when factors like age and income were taken into account.

Dissatisfied

On the UK’s overall satisfaction with social care, only 13% of respondents said they were “very” or “quite” satisfied with social care – the same figure as 2023.

Across the UK, 53% of respondents were “very” or”‘quite” dissatisfied – whilst respondents in Wales (69%) were again significantly more likely to be dissatisfied than the survey average.

Nuffield Trust said many factors are likely to influence reported satisfaction rates including national debate in the media and social media around the NHS and social care.

Fieldwork for the survey was carried out between 16 September and 27 October 2024, after a period of political upheaval in Wales and the wider UK.

Nuffield Trust analysis cited First Minister Vaughan Gething’s resignation after only four months in the job as a contributing factor in the poll’s results.

Controversy

Gething was embroiled in several controversies in the spring and summer of 2024 regarding donations to his leadership campaign from a convicted criminal and the sacking of one of his junior ministers.

Hannah Blythyn was removed from government after Gething accused her of leaking messages to the media from a Covid-era group chat ministers used to discuss the handling of the pandemic.

Gething was Wales’ health minister during the height of the Covid-19 outbreak and last year gave televised evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry.

Nuffield Trust analysis also cited the fact that waiting times hit successive record highs in Wales last year as a contributing factor in the poll’s results – as well as performance across several measures being consistently worse in Wales than in England and Scotland.

This disparity was made clear in media reporting.

Startling

Nuffield Trust analysis stated that this year’s results have revealed that a “startling collapse in public satisfaction” with both the NHS and social care has continued across the whole of the UK.

Satisfaction with the health service in the UK overall is now 39 percentage points lower than it was before the pandemic in 2019.

Dissatisfaction with the NHS has climbed further to 59% in the UK – a record level never seen before in the survey’s 41-year history.

Meanwhile, satisfaction with social care across the whole of Britain appears to have plateaued at a low of 13%.

The Welsh Conservatives say the Welsh Government have “driven satisfaction with the Welsh health service into the ground”.

Staff numbers

Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, James Evans said: “People in Wales are clearly and rightly fed up to the back teeth with Labour’s atrocious mismanagement of the Welsh NHS, with nearly three quarters now dissatisfied.

“The Welsh Conservatives have a plan to fix the Welsh NHS and improve outcomes, with a focus on easing restrictions to encourage cross-border and cross-sector collaboration in the short-term, with a new and substantial workforce plan to boost staff numbers in the long-term.”

The Welsh Government’s most recent National Survey for Wales poll carried out in 2021 – 22 used a much larger sample size of around 12,000 people.

Respondents gave a score of 6.3 out of 10 for their overall satisfaction with the Welsh NHS.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “Our NHS works hard every day to provide the best possible care for people in Wales.

“We are investing record levels of funding in our health service and there are more staff working in the NHS than ever. Long waits for planned treatment and the overall waiting list are falling.

“But we know there is more to do. We will continue to work with the NHS to improve access to care and people’s experience of care.”