Hard Brexit threat to Wales NHS

A VERY happy birthday to the NHS.

A birthday is a time for celebration and, more than anything, I think we should celebrate the hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who, over 70 years, have made the NHS what it is.

They’re our friends, they’re our families, and they’re our loved ones.

My grandmother would have left the NHS in its very first few years.

She was a nurse at the Royal Liverpool hospital and I know she would be looking back with amazement at what the NHS has become.

Any birthday is a time for reflection.

The 70-year anniversary is a time to reflect that we have an NHS that has lasted this long. It’s a fantastic achievement.

When it was created, there were great doubts about whether it would last, about whether it would be sustainable, and about whether the concept of providing care free at the point of delivery would lead to an onslaught of people seeking free treatment.

Now, at risk of playing political football, there are those on the right of politics who still question the sustainability of the NHS and think that privatisation is the way forward. They raise fears of an onslaught of people seeking free prescriptions and so on.

But I’m confident that we’ll be looking back at 140 years, when another 70 years has gone by again, and I’m sure the same questions about sustainability will be asked.

The point has been raised about the NHS being used as a political football.

I have no doubt that this Labour Welsh Government and the Welsh Conservatives and, of course, ourselves in Plaid Cymru, want the NHS to perform as well as it possibly can.

We have different approaches, of course, on how that could be achieved, and I think that, where we can work together, it is in the interests of everybody in Wales.

That’s why I’m proud that we in Plaid Cymru secured the cross-party parliamentary review of the service to look at what needs to change to help it navigate the waters of the future.

But it is important that we do hold government to account. Labour has been running the NHS in Wales for more than 20 years now, and still seeks to blame the Tories for the problems it experiences, and takes advantage of the weakness of understanding regarding devolution.

That’s one reason why it’s vital for us to be raising questions about why the government has failed to get to grips with the workforce challenges in the way that I think could have been done; why there’s still a lack of integration of social care; and why there is still poor performance on waiting times compared with other nations in the UK.

Patients and staff of the NHS look to us to hold government to account on those areas, and this has to be seen as part of the process of improving the service and ensuring it survives.

But the biggest threat at the beginning of the second 70 years of the NHS is the very real threat of a hard/no deal Brexit, which would cause immense risks to the transportation of medicines and on staff recruitment.

These problems may well be resolved in the event of a deal with the EU, but it’s increasingly likely this won’t happen.

So it was concerning that the answer that I heard from the First Minister in plenary suggested that there are no preparations being made within the Welsh NHS for a hard Brexit.

He suggested that there’s no way the NHS could prepare for a hard Brexit.

I don’t believe that for a second, and now is the time to be making sure that all possible steps – however challenging they may be – are taken to prepare us for a hard Brexit.

England is making these plans.

Wales shouldn’t be burying its head in the sand.

If there is one lesson the 70th anniversary teaches us, it’s that the NHS has the staff and public support to survive the biggest challenges that get thrown at it.

It’s up to us as politicians to help and not hinder the service, and to work with its brightest minds to secure its future, not consign it to history through negligence.