As Labour in Westminster continues with the Conservative’s austerity agenda, Sioned Williams MS asks what this means for NHS Wales
This article was published in the Western Mail on Monday 30 September 2024.
New Minister, same old story
As I looked across to the Labour benches in the Senedd during the debate on NHS Waiting Lists, I noted six people had held the post of Health Minister. Three of these had held the post since the Senedd had last met in July: Eluned Morgan, Mark Drakeford and Jeremy Miles.
But while we have seen different faces coming and going it’s the same old story when it comes to the health service: standards going down, waiting times getting longer, staff being pushed to the limit, and from the Government, nothing but repeated empty promises of how, this time, they’re going to focus on tackling waiting lists.
Much of what we can do in Wales is constrained by what’s coming in from UK Treasury, but it’s not just about what’s being paid to Wales, it’s what’s being cut at a UK level that can have catastrophic consequences for our NHS.
Take the decisions made by previous Conservative Governments to reduce budget deficits – an approach known as austerity. Read any number of studies on the long-term impact of austerity policies and you're bound to come to the same conclusion: Austerity is damaging to people’s health and poverty makes people ill.
In fact, austerity measures are directly responsible for worsening the health inequalities that cost the NHS in Wales £322 million every year, and most damaging of all, for causing 190,000 additional deaths between 2010 and 2019.
One might expect that the priority of any party that is interested in rebuilding the foundations of our stricken health service and that takes pride in its socialist beliefs as the party of Aneurin Bevan, would be to ensure that this disastrous dogma is immediately consigned to the dustbin of history. But what we had all feared throughout the general election campaign has now come to pass, because it appears that Keir Starmer’s party is as enamoured of austerity policies as their Conservative predecessors.
Even George Osborne, the Tory architect of austerity, didn’t take the winter fuel payment away from pensioners, although he did consider it – and at that time, Labour objected.
It's a cut that will drive even more pensioners in Wales deeper into fuel poverty and, of course, will intensify the pressure on our health and care service when their health is affected by the cold.
The First Minister shows no appetite to challenge her Labour counterpart in Westminster on austerity measures or to push for fixing the social care system, which would result in crucial funding to do the same in Wales.
Indeed, while Labour told us having two Labour Governments working on both sides of the M4 would improve things in Wales, it actually seems to mean a continuation of the failing status quo for Wales of underinvestment in our vital health and social care services and therefore a continuation of the health inequalities and ill health caused by austerity measures. Which, however Labour wants to spin it, duck it or deny it, is a political choice.