Category: Press Releases

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 13 December 2022.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative and Shadow Social Services Minister Gareth Davies MS said:

“It is about time the Labour Government delivered on Welsh Conservative calls for a higher wage for social carers, something we called for in the last election.

“It is a shame it took so long to deliver, especially when it would have cost only £9m last year to tie carer pay to NHS pay-scales.

“Now we need to see the other improvements we want for carers from a right to respite to upskilling carers to take on more fulfilling responsibilities. This would be in addition to free bus travel and grants to access education, training, and employment for young carers.

“The Budget has to be one of delivery, and this is what the Welsh Conservatives will be pushing for.”

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 13 December 2022.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 12 December 2022.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 12 December 2022.

Over 800 children are waiting over two years for autism diagnoses from the Labour-run Welsh NHS, new research has revealed.

Freedom of Information requests from the Welsh Conservatives have uncovered how, of the 7,258 children waiting to find out if they are on the autism spectrum, two-thirds are waiting over six months, 40% over a year, and 22% over 18 months. 804 (or 11%) are waiting over two years.

The final figures are likely to be far higher as North Wales’ Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board refused to provide figures. In September, over 10,000 patients were waiting over 14 weeks for diagnostic and therapies services there, the second highest figure in Wales.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Mental Health Minister James Evans MS said:

“Whilst it is understandable that Covid has impacted waiting times, no one would agree it is acceptable for children and parents to wait several months, even years, for an autism diagnosis.

“That diagnosis could be key to giving a child the support they need in their schools and at home, with teachers and parents feeling more confident in helping them too.

“That’s why we pushed for an Autism Act in 2018, only to be blocked by Labour, and why we have called for various improvements to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Integrated Autism Service.

“Unfortunately, this is what the Labour Government delivers to the Welsh people – they can now add 800 children waiting over two years for an autism diagnosis to the worst A&E waits in Britain, the longest NHS waiting list in the UK, and its own slowest ambulance response times on record.”

The ONS estimates that the UK has an Autism prevalence rate of more than 1 in 100 people. According to the National Autistic Society, at least one in three Autistic adults are experiencing severe mental health difficulties due to a lack of support; 70% of Autistic adults would feel less isolated if they received more support.

The national Integrated Autism Service (IAS) was rolled-out across Wales in 2017, but its effectiveness in providing services to Autistic people has been questioned, with issues experienced in the provision and delivery of services.

Some services struggled to manage demand for their services and long waiting lists for assessment and diagnosis have developed, with these expected to occur in future services. A lack of reporting mechanisms has also made it difficult to judge demand for support and the capacity of the IAS to meet this support and what outcomes are achieved for service users.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 9 December 2022.

This article was published in the Western Mail on 9th December 2022

WHILE it can be irritating – especially as a politician in a devolved legislature which is not covered nearly enough in the British media – to see news of US politics with little bearing on our nation, events there surrounding the restrictions on abortion has made me think about women’s rights in this country.

Our society has come a long way in the last century in this regard, from voting rights to equal pay to being elected prime minister, but there will be cases where it feels we are going backwards.

The case of Sarah Everard last year, who was kidnapped by a police officer, Wayne Couzens, abusing his position of authority in order to rape and kill her was a story that sickened us all – not only because we saw someone in a trusted profession behave with such cruelty and malice, but that a grown man that had been capable enough to enter the police service in the 21st century thought he had the right to do that to another person.

It speaks of an abhorrent attitude in our age that women are lesser beings. Was this not meant to be a thing of the past as we have become more enlightened about the unalienable rights of human beings?

More recently, we saw Andrew Tate banned from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube – in addition to being thrown off Twitter a few years ago. The former Big Brother contestant and kickboxer had become a social media personality, but yet was promoting views that denigrate women, treating them as objects to be controlled and owned. That rise in misogyny, fueled by ‘influencers’ like Tate and left unchallenged by platforms like TikTok, I argue, would be more likely to lead to more cases like Wayne Couzens’, not fewer.

A simple Google search would bring up several reports alleging misogynistic language and behaviour. I agree with the views of domestic abuse charities that this is extreme misogyny with the potential to radicalise men and boys to commit harm offline.

This is all the more credible when it is considered that Tate was one of TikTok’s most famous personalities – videos of him on the platform have been watched 11.6 billion times. To me, this man is a toxic influence among the generations that are newest to the workplace and the one that will follow them. It equally shows why this government is right to bring in the Online Harms Bill. We need to tackle social media platforms that don’t want to silence such ‘influencers’ as Tate because those platforms benefit from sharing of his content.

While moves to ban him from social media have finally occurred, his videos are already widespread. And he won’t be the only such person out there. And, I fear many of his followers may now have this outlook on women already woven into their being.

I do not believe there is a partisan way to approach this troubling aspect of our society. While the new curriculum in Wales has been criticised from some quarters over its relationship education programme, I hope it will work in a positive way to address how women are treated and perceived, and I am pleased that the Welsh Government seem to be going in this direction.

It is not just about getting young boys to counter sexism when they see it later in life, but also for young girls to challenge it, not just among men but, within themselves and their female peers.

Indeed, a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, found in a series of experiments that participants processed images of men and women in very different ways.

When presented with images of men, perceivers tended to rely more on “global” cognitive processing, the mental method in which a person is perceived as a whole. Meanwhile, images of women were more often the subject of “local” cognitive processing, or the objectifying perception of something as an assemblage of its various parts.

This is why we need to reach our young people now – stamp out this attitude before it takes over how their very brains work.

Ultimately, as any parent will know, the home environment will largely be the most significant influence on a child’s life and view of the world. As when it comes to homework, children need to hear from those they love and trust most of the value of putting the hard graft in.

It is the same when it comes to behaviour towards women. If children see misogynistic language or action at home, whether that be exhibited from men or women, then it becomes increasingly permissible. This can not only be replicated in younger generations, but it can metastasise into the crimes our society abhors the most.

Some might ask why a man is writing an article about women’s rights. I will simply say that if a man is incapable of doing so, then we are in more trouble than we think.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 8 December 2022.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 8 December 2022.

The Welsh Ambulance Service have carried out over two million hours of paid overtime in the last five years, it can be revealed.

Figures obtained by the Welsh Conservatives show WAST staff work an average of 31,700 hours of overtime every month since April 2017, at a total cost of £61,166,262 – over £10m per year.

The news comes after October saw the slowest ambulance response times for red-calls on record with fewer than half reaching their patient in the eight-minute target. Additionally, two-thirds of amber call patients – which include strokes – took over an hour to reach, with only 19% arriving within 30 minutes.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister Russell George MS said:

“These figures are really concerning but hardly surprising, especially with ambulance workers – who’s work I am certain everyone is grateful for – regularly recording the highest sickness rates in the NHS.

“Ambulance technicians are regularly stuck waiting outside A&E departments, unable to handover their patient, and go to help others. This is what happens when the NHS is ill-equipped to deal with emergency patients and healthy patients cannot be discharged into a care setting.

“Is it any wonder we have NHS workers striking when they are burning out from exhaustion? Yet we have a culture of overtime that is costing the NHS millions. Now it is nurses, but how long before that spreads into other parts of the NHS?

“Labour need to get a grip on the NHS and stop breaking all the wrong records like they are on ambulance response times, A&E waits, and treatment waiting lists.”

The figures do not include unpaid overtime, and WAST were unable to provide figures on the number of staff who worked paid overtime.