Tag: Press Release

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 25 November 2022.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 24 November 2022.

A series of newspaper articles in recent months have called into question their safeguarding policies. The National Lottery Community Fund has since suspended future payments to them and the Department for Education has removed it from its mental health and wellbeing resources for schools.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Education Minister, Laura Anne Jones MS said:

“I am glad to see that public bodies as well as the UK Government, in recognition of these controversies, are cutting ties with Mermaids.

“The Labour Government, here in Wales, have yet to see sense and are keeping the contact information for Mermaids on Wales’ digital learning centre, the Hwb. Labour have serious questions to answer about their stubborn persistence in partnering with this group.

“Supporting children must be a top priority, but clearly, this organisation is wholly unfit and should not be trusted to safeguard vulnerable young people or to receive taxpayer cash to provide so-called ‘diversity training’.”

Mermaids is an advocacy group that claims to support gender variant and transgender youth and provides ‘inclusion and diversity training’.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 24 November 2022.

Following the publication of a review of how Bridgend Council’s children services department handled the case of murdered five year-old Logan Mwangi, Welsh Conservative Shadow Social Services Minister Gareth Davies MS said:

“What happened to Logan was a tragedy that should never have happened and might have been prevented if the failures identified in this report were avoided.

“Not only do we see a reluctance to escalate Logan’s situation in the face of obvious evidence and agencies working in silos, not sharing information, but understaffed departments that prove our concerns about high dependency of agency workers leading to cases like this are vindicated.

“The report also shows the Council being quick to blame Covid for some of its shortcomings, but it does suggest that the Labour Government’s guidance was not clear or responsive enough to allow social workers to properly safeguard vulnerable children during the pandemic.

“It is clear that in addition to Bridgend Council implementing the report’s recommendations, we need a Wales-wide review of children’s services which, sadly, Mark Drakeford continues to block despite Wales being the only UK nation not undertaking one and having the UK’s highest rate of looked-after children.”

Welsh Conservative research recently uncovered that Bridgend Council spent £1,147,354 on agency social workers in the year Logan was killed. The Party argue that permanent staff are needed to build relationships with families and observe cases over time. One of the observations of the report was:

“In order to robustly understand the family dynamics, practitioners need to have sufficient time to undertake assessment sessions, opportunity to undertake observational sessions and sufficient time to reflect and analyse the information gathered… [There was an] absence of consistent experienced staffing across agencies.”

According to Freedom of Information responses, 376 agency social workers were employed by Welsh councils last year at a cost of £20,423,189. This is an increase from 365 for £18,522,072 in 2020/21 and 279 for £16,149,980 the year before. Already since April this year, £1.8m has been spent on 143 such staff but the cost is likely to far exceed this over the course of a whole year.

The reliance of local authorities on agency social workers has become a significant area of concern in recent months after a council that admitted it failed to prevent the murder of toddler Star Hobson has a serious staff retention problem in its children’s services.

Bradford Council spent £12.3m on agency staff in the last year – representing a doubling of its spend since the 16-month-old girl died on 22 September 2020. It also has the highest spend in the country.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 24 November 2022.

A Labour Government Minister accused a Natasha Asghar MS of making “hysterical” comments in the Senedd. The Senedd Presiding Officer said that she does not “expect to hear it again” as it was an “inappropriate word” to describe contributions by women in the Senedd.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Transport Minister, Natasha Asghar MS said:

“Lee Waters claims that he didn’t mean what he said, but anyone who watched the full exchange would be able to see that he was giving it with both barrels, his arrogance and ignorance on full display.

“This kind of behaviour is symptomatic of their perpetual rule here in Wales, 25 years in power and their lack of respect for the Members of the Senedd outside of their Labour clique is sadly, completely predictable.

“Patronising, condescending, and misogynistic language like this has absolutely no place in today’s society, let alone in the Welsh Parliament.”

Ms Asghar had criticised Lee Waters for confirming in a television interview that motorists should expect to see road charges introduced in the future, prior to his tirade.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 24 November 2022.

Figures uncovered by the Welsh Conservatives have revealed that a large majority of land purchased for tree-planting has no trees planted on it.

According to Natural Resources Wales (NRW), approximately 152,000 trees have been planted on 61.36 hectares for new woodland creation. However, a total of 302 hectares, at a cost of £3.5 million, had been purchased leaving 80% tree-free

Figures also show that from 2020/21 to 2021/22, the number of trees more than halved and the number of hectares planted fell by nearly two-thirds.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Climate Change Minister Janet Finch-Saunders MS said:

“There is a huge ambition shared across Welsh society to play a part in tackling climate change, but we know it isn’t easy. Whilst tree-planting is just a small aspect of the solution, it can prove controversial if takes up land that could be better deployed, for farming or housing, for instance.

“Which is why it is so frustrating to see millions of pounds spent by an arm of the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay on land to plant those trees, only for a huge majority of it to be lying empty and unplanted over several years.

“It is a shame to be highlighting shortcomings rather than progress during Wales Climate Week, but we will never get anywhere if the Labour Government cannot even be embarrassed into action.”

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 24 November 2022.

To mark Carers Rights Day, the Welsh Conservatives are reiterating their calls for care workers in Wales to receive a £10 per hour minimum wage.

The call was a manifesto commitment from the Welsh Conservatives who are calling on the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay to implement it.

When ministers decided to only give £9.90 per hour last year, they made a conscious decision not to spend only £9m more to match care worker wages to NHS pay-scales.

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

“It is a shame ministers in Cardiff Bay decided not to spend an extra £9m to put carers on the same pay-scales as NHS workers, because they play just as important a part in looking after people when they are at  their most vulnerable.

“It is really disappointing to constantly here people choosing to work in retail and hospitality because they find the care sector too unattractive.

“While it is not a silver bullet to solving the problems NHS leaders are saying is in crisis, one thing we can do is make the role as fulfilling as possible, giving carers more agency in their actions and improving their skill-set by expanding what carers can do with improved training.

“Future-proofing the profession will help end the long-standing issues in recruiting carers and play a part in ending other issues like bed-blocking in hospitals that, in turn, will improve NHS treatment, A&E, and ambulance waits.”

Davies also repeated one of the Party’s long-standing solutions to the sector’s recruitment crisis: improved training for care home workers to undertake basic checks such as blood pressure and to tackle common ailments such as trips and falls. This would aim to improve the standing of care workers but also reduce pressure on the NHS and increase the speed of treatment for patients.

It comes after the Director of the Welsh NHS Confederation said the social care “sector is already in crisis,” which itself followed a survey that found all NHS Wales leaders surveyed agreed there is a crisis in the social care workforce, with a subsequent impact on patient care and safety.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 24 November 2022.

The Welsh Conservatives have branded the Labour Government’s deal with Plaid Cymru one that fails the climate one year since the Cooperation Agreement was signed.

The accusation lands during Wales Climate Week and comes when Wales’ largest opposition party say the deal, which is heavily focussed on vanity projects, should be scrapped to allow ministers to focus on delivering on people’s priorities.

Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Climate Change Minister Janet Finch-Saunders MS said:

“Labour and Plaid like to wear their climate credentials on their sleeve, but on closer inspection you’ll find that they only pay lip service to actually doing something productive.

“We are still waiting several years for the single-use plastic ban and for the Clean Air Act – instead, they would rather force farmers into planting trees on 10% of their land in return for basic payments, no matter the state and current use of that land.

“Meanwhile, they are well behind on meetings targets set in their grubby deal and have been inactive in tacking on significant challenges like sewage being pumped into waterways, something which the UK Conservative Government is tackling with strong, new legislation.

“It again shows that we need to follow in England and Scotland’s footsteps to force the Labour Government to deliver like those nations have with an Independent Office for Environmental Protection and Climate Change for Wales.

“The Welsh Conservatives are also committed to kick-starting the Welsh green revolution by putting £150m into a Wales Marine Energy Investment Fund to support marine energy projects, including small-scale hydro schemes to deliver the change Labour and Plaid are incapable of.”

The parties are behind on making progress on the headline policies in the Agreement:

• Flood Review: This is yet to report on flooding in winter 2020/21 preventing any action on recommendations and delivering on flood capital investment and resilience.
• Net Zero: The commitment to commission independent advice to examine potential pathways to net zero by 2035 has not yet begun. It only appointed a Chair in August.
• Net Zero Energy Company: the scope and scale of the company has yet to be determined.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 23 November 2022.

This evening the Senedd voted in favour of a motion calling on the Welsh Government to meet with the Royal College of Nursing Wales to avoid strike action this winter.

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

“This winter nurses across Wales will be going on strike and yet the Labour Health Minister hasn’t met with them to discuss their concerns on fair pay and safe staffing.

“It really shouldn’t have taken the Senedd to vote in this way to formally encourage the Health Minister to do what she should be doing in the first place.

“Sadly, this vote isn’t binding but I hope the Labour Government hear our calls and finally pick up the phone to RCN Wales.”

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 23 November 2022.

This afternoon, Shadow Education Minister, Laura Anne Jones MS questioned Labour’s Jeremy Miles about his ‘Unions and the World of Work’ pilot. This pilot will involve 35 secondary schools with a view to expanding it Wales wide, inviting trade union representatives into schools as ‘guest speakers’.

Commenting on the exchange, Laura Anne Jones MS said:

“The Welsh Conservatives have no issue with children being taught about the workplace and in fact, would actively encourage careers and work-related experience.

“However, it doesn’t seem fair, or proper, that politicised Trade Unions – that donate large sums of money to the Labour party are allowed into our schools, where they have the ability to influence. Political impartiality ultimately helps schools command the confidence of our whole diverse and multi-opinion society.

“Unite, one of the unions taking part in this pilot, have donated millions of pounds to the UK Labour party. They have donated £33,000 to the Welsh Labour party directly since 2020. The Education Minister himself is a member of that union and received nearly £2,000 from them to help cover his election expenses last year.

“The Education Minister clearly does not see a conflict of interest here, or perhaps he just doesn’t care.”

One of the unions to be invited into schools as part of this pilot is the Labour affiliated Unite union. An organisation that has donated £33,000 to Labour in Wales since 2020 and many millions to Labour over the years at UK level.

The press release issued by the Welsh Conservatives on 23 November 2022.

The Welsh Conservatives challenged the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay over its plans to impose a default 20mph speed limit in Wales and expand the number of 50mph zones.

Shadow Transport Minister Natasha Asghar MS took Deputy Minister for Climate Change, Lee Waters, to task following an interview he did on ITV’s Sharp End last week, when he criticised the “remarkably narrow sighted view” of Cardiff Bus after they expressed concerns over the effects of the 20mph limit on the viability of the business, which is a Council asset.

Commenting afterwards, Ms Asghar said:

“The Labour Government’s plans for Welsh roads is nothing less than a war on motorists that show ministers to be anti-worker, anti-business, and anti-growth.

“Despite the misery plaguing drivers due to poor infrastructure planning from Labour-run city councils and Welsh Government – including their roadbuilding ban – ministers are intent on pursuing a policy they know is economically damaging.

“Ultimately, Labour ministers, instead of nudging behavioural change with incentives are bashing motorists to fulfil an agenda that was cobbled together with little recognition of why people want to own and use their own cars.

“It’s time to get Wales moving again by dropping these plans, ending the roadbuilding ban, and investing in improved infrastructure for both public and private transport rather than generate a war between those who drive and those who don’t.”

According to the Labour Government’s own figures, the plans to make 20mph the default speed limits for Welsh roads will cost £32.5m to implement and draining the economy by £4.5bn, despite little public support and removing the choice from local decisionmakers.

New research has also revealed that cutting speed limits on urban roads to 20mph does not significantly improve safety. A report, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, analysed data from before and after the limit was introduced on 76 roads in Belfast in 2016.

Comparisons with streets in the surrounding area and elsewhere in Northern Ireland that retained their 30mph or 40mph limit showed there were “no statistically significant differences” in terms of the number of crashes, casualty rates or average traffic speed.

Asghar, who is a Member of the Senedd for South Wales East, also highlighted the ineffective 50mph in Newport that have failed to meaningfully reduce congestion on the M4 in the vicinity. Despite this,  Waters said it would still pursue an expansion of their use beyond the existing five sites.