Welsh Tories to declare health emergency and send volunteers to hospitals if elected
Kyle Bright
The Welsh Conservatives have outlined plans to declare a national health emergency, alongside the creation of a reserve of volunteer hospital staff to address the issues that face the Welsh NHS.
The proposals were unveiled during the Conservative Party’s Welsh conference in Llandudno as part of their Plan to Fix the NHS and Social Care, which aims to “increase hospital capacity and restore patient safety”.
It details that the initiation of a COVID-type emergency response would coincide with the designation of 12-hour waits in emergency units as “never events” to end corridor care.
Peter Fox, the Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, said the declaration of an emergency is a response with the “urgency the situation demands”.
“That means reopening beds, boosting staffing levels, and ending the unacceptable practice of treating patients in corridors,” Fox says.
The party would also form a pool of trained and vetted volunteers under a new NHS Wales Reserves Service to be deployed during crisis periods and high demand.
Fox claimed the service will bring support during periods of pressure on the health service, saying: “Our NHS needs greater flexibility and resilience.
“An NHS Wales Reserves Service will ensure that when demand surges, trained and vetted volunteers can step forward to support frontline staff.”
Other aspects of the plan include the reopening of closed community hospital wards for step-down and rehabilitation care, an increase in the number of hospital beds, and the establishment of a dedicated NHS recovery team.
The Welsh Tories also promise a real terms increase to health and social care spending every year of the next Senedd term if they were to get into government.
Longer-term measures
The party has pledged that it will modernise the health service through an efficiency taskforce, and the greater use of AI.
They will also aim to retain and recruit more hospital staff, including the refunding of tuition fees for health professionals who commit to working in the Welsh NHS.
Additionally, the party commits to creating a 21st Century Hospitals Fund with the aim of modernising infrastructure.
For patients, a Patients’ Rights Charter will be published which includes a seven-day guarantee for appointments, expanded surgical hubs and diagnostic centres, plus cross-border access to care where needed.
‘Fit for the 21st century’
The Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care claimed the NHS is in “crisis” after “27 years of Labour mismanagement”.
He continued: “Patients are waiting too long for ambulances, too long in emergency departments, and too long for treatment. That is simply not good enough.”
On his party’s plans, Peter Fox said the aim was to build a “resourced” and “accountable” health service that is “fit for the 21st century”.
“We will invest in staff, modernise our hospitals, strengthen governance and empower patients with real choice.”, he added.
“The people of Wales deserve an NHS that works for them — one that is safe, efficient and focused on delivering high-quality care as close to home as possible. Our plan will fix Wales’ NHS.”
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Volunteers? AI? I prefer paid staff. And I do not care what country they are from, unlike the Tory party.
You need throughput, elderly nation needs a care package and staff to look after or people bed block. It’s not a one hit fixes all.
Presumably funded by increasing income tax.
re introducing car park charges and scrapping free prescriptions. (Yeah I know it is from taxes but it helps thousands every week).
What a load of headline grabbing nonsense! So who is going to train and vet all these volunteers? Better to put staff time and resources to actually treating people.
I’m sure Darren’s tory supporters will be champing at the bit to help out. Which begs the question, how many tories does it take to empty a bedpan?
It would be interesting to know where he thinks he can find these “trained and vetted volunteers”! Also I really don’t think NHS Cymru is much worse than NHS England. My social media input is primarily Cymru based, but I have seen two NHS Trusts in England (Worcester and Nottingham) declare critical incidents or similar in the last week. Even pre-Covid there were lots of problems in England with ambulance delays and waits for admission. My husband was taken to Hereford County Hospital in December 2019 and was cared for in a corridor. We were told that we were lucky… Read more »
More soundbites from a man whose Westminster party is largely responsible for Wales’s historical ill health. He campaigned for Brexit — a decision that robbed Wales of highly skilled medical professionals from Europe — and, when in office, his party not only denied our Senedd vital HS2 consequentials but also continued to underfund Wales through the archaic Barnett formula, while constantly interfering in devolved matters. These actions have created and perpetuated the ongoing social and health crisis we face today. If Darren Millar truly wants to help our NHS and Wales, he should step down and go away. “Empty vessels… Read more »
Because that’s what understaffed hospitals need during an outbreak. An influx of unqualified people trying to tell them how to do their jobs more efficiently whilst simultaneously getting in the way. Has he really thought this through?
Don’t have much time for this modern fashion of ‘declaring’ something to be a national emergency as if that in itself constitutes any kind of action. On the contrary it would be nice to see politicians move out of the business of creating unnecessary hysteria. None of the actual policies outlined depend on such a declaration. Just pure theatre.
So the Tories will end business rates, cut income tax and abolish land transaction tax at a cost of nearly a billion pounds all at the same time as increasing spending on health and building a new M4 relief road (2-3 billion) and ending the 20mph (60 million). At the same time council tax will be frozen. This will mean huge and unprecedented cuts and austerity elsewhere.
It all seems somewhat hypocritical from a bunch of politicians who have spent the best part of half a century thrusting neoliberal economics on us. It is those economics that are responsible for most of the malaise in our society, and yet no-one really challenges the narrative that there is no alternative to the neoliberal economics that we know don’t work, never have worked and never will work. The only success of neoliberalism, and in fact the only thing it was designed to do was to enrich the already obscenely rich and bring us to a point where we stand… Read more »
No-one on the right seriously believes in neoliberalism any more. That obviously bonkers ideology came crashing down in 2008 when it collapsed capitalism which had to be bailed out by the very state they don’t believe in. We’re now in a protracted phase of distraction and misdirection where those that got rich and powerful during the decades of state-sanctioned thievery are trying to delay the clawing back for as long as possible.
Has anyone asked retired medics if they want to work for free?