NHS cross-border treatment plans slammed as ‘PR stunt’

Plans to allow NHS patients to travel to England for treatment have been branded a “PR stunt” in the Senate.

Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens revealed a new partnership at the Labour Party conference on Monday to share best practice to tackle issues facing the NHS in England and Wales.

The move will allow patients to travel between the two countries for outpatient or planned treatment, in an attempt to tackle record-breaking waiting lists in Wales.

But Andrew Rt Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, criticised Eluned Morgan, the Welsh First Minister, for failing to provide enough detail on how the plans would work in practice, asking how much capacity could be created and what the costs would be.

In his speech at First Minister’s Questions on Tuesday, Mr Davies also criticised the Welsh Government for only now taking up the scheme, arguing that the previous Conservative government proposed a similar policy in 2023.

However, Eluned Morgan, the new First Minister of Wales, insisted the previous offer was “not serious” and that talks with the UK Government had already started.

Mr RT Davies said: “I think it’s a sensible and progressive way of tackling the problem of waiting times here in Wales but I would like to get the gist of it, otherwise people will just treat it as a PR stunt that was launched at the Labour Party conference and in six months’ time we’ll still have these chronic waiting times here in Wales.”

He added: “I regret that the First Minister and her party did not take up this offer in August 2023 and I sympathise with the additional 50,000 people who joined the waiting lists in Wales during that time.

“Fifty thousand extra people have been put on the waiting list here in Wales because you refused to take up the second offer in August 2023.”

The First Minister also faced criticism from Rhun ap Iorwerth, leader of the Plaid Cymru party, who suggested she wanted to “hand over the NHS in Wales” to Sir Keir Starmer.

Baroness Morgan said the two governments would “discuss the details in the coming weeks”, stressing that talks had already started.

In response to Mr RT Davies’s criticism of not accepting the 2023 offer, she said: “It was not a serious offer.

“Steve Barclay (former Conservative health minister) didn’t contact us for a whole year, had a five-minute meeting and then went on the air the next day to get a political point across.

“This does not build trust between the two governments. This is not the way to cooperate. There was no false intention on our part.

“If I thought for a moment they were serious, I would have bitten their hand off, but they were playing politics and that’s not how we operate.”

Although Mr RT Davies insisted it was a serious offer, Baroness Morgan said there had been “no further action”.

She added that there were no vacancies in England at the time, which were expected to be created when the new Labour government in the UK rolls out plans for an extra 40,000 appointments a week, stating that “we will receive a percentage of that number”.