Plans for cross-border NHS treatment branded ‘PR gimmick’
There needs to be more detail on how cross-border NHS plans will work in practice, Conservatives in the Senedd have said.
Plans to allow NHS patients to travel to England for treatment have been branded a “PR gimmick” in the Senedd.
Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens revealed a new partnership intended to exchange best practices to address the challenges facing the NHS in England and Wales at the Labour Party conference on Monday.
The move will allow patients to travel between the two countries to receive outpatient or elective treatment, in an effort to tackle record waiting lists in Wales.
But Andrew RT Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, criticised Eluned Morgan, the First Minister of Wales, for not giving enough detail on how the plans will work in practice, asking what capacity may be created and what the costs would be.
Speaking during First Minister’s Questions on Tuesday, Mr Davies also criticised the Welsh Labour government for only taking up the scheme now, arguing that the former Tory government offered a similar policy in 2023.
But Eluned Morgan, the new First Minister of Wales, insisted that the former offer had not been “serious” and that the conversation with the UK Government had now started.
Mr RT Davies said: “I believe that it is a sensible and progressive way of addressing waiting times here in Wales, but I’d like to see the substance of it, otherwise people will just look at it as a PR gimmick that was launched at the Labour Party conference and this time in six months we’ll still have those chronic waiting times here in Wales.”
He added: “What I regret is that the First Minister and her party did not take up that offer in August 2023 and the sympathy that I have for the additional 50,000 people who have joined those waiting lists in Wales in the intervening period.
“Fifty thousand extra people are on a waiting list here in Wales because you declined to take that chance of the second offer scheme in August 2023.”
The First Minister also faced criticism from Rhun ap Iorwerth, leader of Plaid Cymru, who suggested she wants to “outsource the NHS in Wales” to Sir Keir Starmer.
Baroness Morgan said the two governments would “come up with the details in weeks to come” insisting the conversations had started.
Responding to Mr RT Davies’ criticism on not taking up the 2023 proposal, she said: “It wasn’t a serious offer.
“Steve Barclay (the former Conservative health minister) had not contacted us for an entire year, he had a five-minute meeting, and the next day went on the airways to score a political point.
“That does not build trust between two governments. That is not the way to co-operate. There was no false intention from our side.
“If I thought for a minute that they were serious, I would have bitten their hand off, but they were playing politics, and that is not the way that we’re working.”
While Mr RT Davies insisted it was a serious offer, Baroness Morgan said there had been “no follow-up”.
She added that there had been no capacity in England at the time which would be created as the new UK Labour government enacts its plans for an additional 40,000 appointments each week, saying “we will get a percentage of that”.
