Tag: Welsh Conservatives

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

Labour’s health minister in Cardiff Bay has been accused of being missing in action at a point of severe NHS pressure.

Baroness Morgan has only made three statements in the Senedd since the summer recess ended in September, one of the lowest total for any minister. No further statements are scheduled for her for the rest of the year.

It comes as the Royal College of Nursing prepares to strike before Christmas at a time when over three-quarters of a million people are on an NHS waiting list, the worst ambulance response times on record, and the longest A&E waits in Britain.

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

“Given the parlous state of the NHS following an attitude of delay and deterioration, I really am surprised how little we are seeing of the Health Minister.

“It is no wonder we have to drag them into the Chamber though topical questions and opposition debates to get answers when we get so little proactive planning to scrutinise.

“When we consider it was the last health minister who said it would be ‘foolish’ to public an NHS recovery plan during the pandemic and this one is refusing to negotiate pay with nurses, we should not be surprised to see the record waits patients and staff have to deal with daily.

“Labour need to get a grip on the NHS and stop breaking all the wrong records.”

Morgan’s three statements put her behind the ministers for Education, Climate Change, Economy, and Finance and Local Government. She is equal with the Minister for Social Justice and the Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport.

Latest NHS figures show:

• 23% of the population on a waiting list, but the number of people waiting over two years is now 57,284 despite such waits having been virtually eliminated in England and Scotland.
• 1-in-4 Welsh patients waited over a year for treatment, but only 1-in-20 do so in England.
• The median waiting time in Wales was 21.8 weeks compared to 14 in England.
• A third (33.4%) of patients had to wait over the four-hour target to be seen in A&E last month. In England and Scotland, the equivalent figure in both was 31%.
• Only 48% of responses to immediately life-threatening calls arrived within eight minutes – the worst rate on record (beating last month’s 50%). The target of 65% of red-calls reaching their patient within eight minutes has not been reached now for over two years.
• Two-thirds (66.7%) of amber call patients – which include strokes – took over an hour to reach, with only 19% arriving within 30 minutes.

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

The Labour Government has taken six weeks to send a ministerial representative to the Menai Bridge since it was forced to close in October.

Lee Waters, Deputy Minister for Climate Change, will visit the bridge that links Anglesey to mainland Britain on 30th November after it was shut down for essential maintenance work.

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

“Lee Waters is so obsessed with punishing motorists with his default 20mph speed limits, congestion charges, and the roadbuilding freeze, it hardly surprises me that it has taken him so long to pay residents affected by the Bridge’s closure a visit.

“But it isn’t just motorists that are affected by Waters’ laziness – the failure to maintain the bridge over time will have a huge impact on businesses who miss out on crucial trade, see deliveries delayed, and employees stuck in traffic.

“Work on the bridge should not have been left to get worse over time and the Labour Government needs to be far more regular with maintenance of the bridge when the reasons behind the closure are resolved.

Conservative Ynys Môn MP Virginia Crosbie added:

“The Menai closure is not only impacting Ynys Môn but all of North Wales, especially considering the impact this will be having on the haulage industry with Holyhead being a major shipping port.

“Sadly, I am not surprised that a Labour minister in Cardiff Bay has taken so long to visit because we see so little from them when it comes to helping North Wales. Indeed, Labour’s neglect of our part of Wales is why we’re in this position in the first place.

“I hope this will now change and we can get the bridge open and Ynys Môn moving again.”

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.”