DURING recent days, numerous postings on X have been aghast at the assertion by former First Minister Mark Drakeford that Wales has too many hospitals.
I never thought I would write this, but Drakeford is neither deluded, deranged nor diabolically out of touch with health matters in Wales; he is merely sowing the seeds of Welsh Labour policy. This is not to let him off the hook, however; please read on.
Drakeford, now Cabinet Secretary for Finance in Wales, was the first guest on a recently established podcast, ‘For Wales, See Wales’, described on its web page thus: ‘Guardian columnist Will Hayward and comedians Mel Owen and Robin Morgan pick apart the political scene in Wales with a combination of journalistic insight and satirical sideswipes.’
With such a diabolical political scene in Wales during recent years, one might wonder whether comedians are entirely appropriate in encouraging political engagement. Some might say we have enough comedians in the Senedd.
I decided to take a listen. I felt nauseated at times but equally surprised once or twice at what I heard during the discourse.
Drakeford began his interview by proudly recounting an anecdote where he’d overheard several ‘women of a certain age’ in a Mumbles (Swansea) café recounting how during covid they would switch on the TV each Friday and ‘listened to everything Mr Drakeford told us’.
The topic soon turned to health, and Drakeford asserted that the health system in Wales is still under pressure because of covid and that covid is still real in Wales. According to him, opinion polls taken several years ago told Welsh Government that for every person in Wales who felt that the country was re-opening too slowly following covid restrictions, two felt that it was ‘too quick’.
Asked about the low standard of public services in general in Wales, Drakeford’s response was that it is ‘very simple – 14 years of austerity’, alluding to the previous Conservative government.
Interestingly, Drakeford explained his view that we are ‘over-medicalised’ and the solution should not be ‘a pill for every ill’, though he did not really elaborate beyond that, except to say that people need to take more responsibility for their own health.
Last year, teetotal Drakeford blamed drunks for missed Accident and Emergency targets in Wales. He was also barred from over 100 pubs in December 2020 following his alcohol ban in hospitality settings as well as a 6pm curfew. Public Health Wales has also published on the possibility of increased alcohol misuse as a result of climate change and its Triple Challenge Report of 2021 referenced a laughable 2018 Swedish paper which suggested that increased alcohol intake will lead to an increase in alcohol-related greenhouse gas emissions.
Back to the issue of ‘too many hospitals’. Drakeford believes that secondary care (i.e. hospitals) ‘sucks the resources from the NHS’. What he fails to elaborate upon is the long-term health strategy for Wales by Public Health Wales (PHW) 2018-2030, about which I have previously written. This strategy refers to its intended reflection of the UN Sustainable Development Goals; the word ‘sustainable’ is littered throughout the document.
One supporting resource for this strategy was the ‘Stay Well In Wales’ survey of 2017. Amongst the findings of this survey were:
1. 66 per cent of people agreed that companies should be made to adopt behaviours to reduce climate change (10 per cent disagreed);
2. 76 per cent supported 20mph speed limits where they will reduce road traffic injuries (12 per cent disagreed);
3. 47 per cent agreed the advertising of alcohol should be banned to reduce alcohol problems (26 per cent disagreed);
4. 34 per cent agreed their GP usually talks to them about how to live a healthier life (interestingly, 50 per cent disagreed).
One has only to look at the line of questioning to see where so-called ‘health policy’ was intended to head.
By 2030 PHW expects to have shifted the balance of healthcare from hospitals to community-based care and states that opportunities to improve health outcomes will include ‘better use of genomics, data science, artificial intelligence and social media’.
Public Health Wales has a collaboration with the World Health Organization whose Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Dr Hans Kluge. This doctor wrote the foreword to the European Immunisation Agenda. As I have previously pointed out in TCW, in his foreword Dr Kluge states: ‘Strong immunisation programmes embedded in primary health care will strengthen the role and impact of primary health care. Immunisation services that reach everyone at every age equitably will contribute to sustainable development and directly support several of the Sustainable Development Goals.’
In May 2024, Eluned Morgan made a statement in the Senedd on the publication of Wales’s first National Immunisation Framework, promising ‘vaccine transformation’ and a ‘vaccine literacy strategy’ to be published in the future by PHW.
Together with genomic research at Gene Park Wales and Wales signing as a partner in 2020 with Genome UK, clearly there is wholesale transformation afoot within the health system in Wales.
The moral of the story is: Do not get distracted by deliberately provocative BBC news headlines. These politicians are not silly: they are gently drip-feeding their future plans. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
