Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price and health spokesperson Rhun ap Iorwerth have said they do not accept the Welsh Government's position that there is no scope for an increased pay offer for NHS workers in Wales. The two senior figures in Plaid made the claim they launched a five point plan to address the health crisis in Wales.
The party has drawn up a five point plan setting out how it believes a number of issues in Wales' health service could be addressed, from fairer pay and better social care to future proofing the NHS. The plans have been drawn up after discussions with groups representing NHS workers, Mr Price said.
Announcing the plans on Tuesday, Mr Price and Mr ap lorwerth, said that they disagree with the Welsh Government's stance that their is no scope for an increased pay offer in Wales. They added they support NHS workers who are not just striking for better pay and conditions but to save the NHS.
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The first of their five point plan aims to address with fairer pay in the NHS, an issue which has seen nurses, ambulance staff and midwives vote for strike action over the last few weeks. While they agreed that the UK Government needs to increase public spending in Wales, they insist that the Welsh Labour Government does have room to increase their pay offer.
NHS staff in Wales have been offered a pay rise of between 4% and 5.5%, but the Royal College of Nursing is looking for a 19% increase. Mark Drakeford has constantly said it would not be possible to increase their pay offer until there was an agreement in England that would lead to a Barnett consequential.
Mr Price called on the Labour party to "pool our ideas together" to come up with a solution to save the NHS. Speaking at the Senedd on Tuesday morning, Mr Price said: "The first step is to acknowledge the scale of the crisis that we are facing and we ask them to work with us to share ideas to address it."
1. Fairer pay
Outlining the five step-plan, Mr ap lorwerth described how the first step must be to address the fair pay and conditions that NHS staff are asking for which is the subject of all the strikes currently taking place.
Their action plan states: "This means providing a fair deal for NHS workers to create the foundation for a sustainable NHS. Awarding NHS workers in Wales with an improved, substantive pay offer will begin to counteract over a decade of decline in wages."
Mr ap lorwerth added: "Until this is resolved there is no moving forward. We do not accept that the Welsh Government have no scope. We agree the UK Government need to increase public spending." He added that the pay issues is "about more than fair pay", and needs to happen in order to attract and retain staff to the health service in Wales.
2. Workforce plan
The second step aims to address this workforce issue. Mr ap lorweth described how better data is needed to see where the Welsh NHS stands in terms of staff.
He said: "We have 3,000 NHS vacancies in Wales currently. 46% of medical students in Wales relocate to England because the placements are not here for them. There are so many elements to this. We need to make sure the staff we have are able to work at the top of their field. We need to make sure they have space to complete qualifications, they want to have time for in service training."
The workforce plan states that the Welsh Government must create a clear delivery strategy with targets and full costing for a new workforce plan. It also calls for expanding training places and to establish improved pathways for professional development.
At the core of this step is the need to remove private agencies and create one public body to provide agency staff in a not-for-profit wat. In relation to agency work, Mr ap lorwerth said he does not believe that nurses use agency work "to become a millionaire", but to take advantage of the flexibility it offers. You can read more about how much the Welsh NHS spends on agency staff here.
He said: "Agency working offers flexibility that working in the NHS may not, if we were to create a public agency it would remove the profit from the private sector. We are not saying that nurses should not do agency work, the bank is a system that works really well for example. Whether nurses want to use agency work to pick up extra shifts or need the flexibility that is something we can offer with a public agency without the profits leaving the NHS." He described the growing use of agency staff as a slow privatisation of the NHS.
3. Prevention
The third point of the plan looks to focus on prevention, stating an ambition to "significantly elevating the prominence and priority given to preventative health measures is paramount to protect the NHS for the future."
The plan aims to create a "Healthy Wales" programme with clear targets and milestones. Mr ap lorwerth described how prevention for health care measures should be considered in all policies across the board and not just health and social care. He stressed that this is in line with the Future Generations Act.
He recognised that prevention requires investment but added in turn it will pay for itself and preventative health care measures and advice will save the NHS in the long term. He said: "We need to recognise that what we do today will affect us tomorrow, and that needs to be considered in all policy". For more stories like this, sign up to our Wales Matters newsletter here.
4. Health and social care
The fourth point addresses the issue of health and social care. The plan states: "This means taking a sustainable approach to ensuring a seamless service - one that is efficiently tailored at point of need."
In order to achieve this, their plan proposes an increase in step-down facilities for patients still in hospital who no longer need acute care. The plan also states there needs to be closer co-ordination with local authorities to ensure timely care assessments are taking place. Mr ap lorwerth described this as something that "simply has to be done".
5. Delivering the recovery
Addressing the need for recovery, the final point of the plan focusses on the need to create a resilient health service for the future. Mr ap lorwerth said one of the initiatives that could be adopted by the health service is creating a two part system - a green zone and red zone in order to prevent disruption to routine services and reduce current waiting list times. Mr ap lowerth told how he visited a newly opened £25m centre in the Wirral, which was created to only carry out elective surgeries.
He said by adopting this approach, there will be a focus to clear the backlog of waiting lists currently facing the Welsh NHS - he said it would mean elective surgeries and procedures could still be carried out without disruption from winter flu pressures and other events.
The plan also states that the NHS Executive for Wales needs the power to make real change and be "patient centred". They also propose that the Welsh Government must hold delivery bodies to account in an open and transparent way, ensuring that new models of care are rolled out consistently.
Mr ap lowerth acknowledged that there are issues that could be addressed which aren't on the list but they claim these are the issues that must be prioritised to address the NHS crisis and create a resilient health service for the future.
A Welsh government spokesperson said that this year it had "invested in new ambulance staff, transforming emergency departments and improving the flow through hospitals, and we have continued to put in place actions to respond to the pressures".
They said: "We have committed more than £1bn extra this Senedd term to help the NHS recover from the pandemic and cut waiting times. We are working with health boards and have set ambitious but realistic targets to tackle the pandemic backlog for planned care, backed by significant extra long-term funding. Last week we announced that almost 400 more nurse training places will be created in Wales thanks to an 8% increase in the NHS Wales training budget."
Read next:
- The Mick Lynch interview: Why Wales needs to avoid 'infection' and what he really thinks of Mark Drakeford
- Midwives announce dates for strike action in Wales
- The eye-watering amount the Welsh NHS spends on agency staff
- 'The ship is sinking': Wales' GP staffing crisis as surgery set t close if it can't recruit new doctors
- Welsh politicians call for four-day working week pilot in Wales
