Opinion: Welsh Government need to fund our healthcare properly

Readers in Newtown will have been shocked at the recent news that Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB) planned to extend waiting times on the delivery of healthcare for Powys residents going across the border to England, in order to address a considerable budget shortfall. PTHB needs to make savings of £9.9 million.

On Friday, 10 January, PTHB met to decide on how it would make these savings, and thankfully, it delayed a decision on extending waiting times. While Newtown Hospital works incredibly hard to deliver rehabilitative and elderly community care, constituents unavoidably have to travel out of county to access other services in Gobowen, Shrewsbury, or Telford.

To make Powys patients wait longer than those already in England would be incredibly unjust. I am sure deteriorating healthcare outcomes for constituents would be the result and have made this opinion clear to the Board.

Decisions like this do not take place in a vacuum. I know Newtown residents have expressed concerns about the temporary downgrading of Llanidloes Hospital, which I am also opposing having called on the Board to ensure this does not become permanent, something I discussed in a previous article for All About Newtown readers. This would affect healthcare all across the south of the constituency. Simultaneously, we are eagerly awaiting the outcome of a judicial review into the closure of the Welshpool Air Ambulance base later his month, and winter pressures always bring the NHS to the front of our minds.

With no district general hospital in the constituency and 40% of healthcare in Powys being outsourced, it is essential that when decisions are made there is an understanding of how individual cuts in different areas shape up to mean a marked decline in healthcare provision for our communities.

I will therefore be calling for a proper financial acknowledgment for our unique position and exercise pressure on the Welsh Government to get this put in place. The decision to delay will allow time to examine alternative ways to make savings, invaluable in putting across arguments for better funding to address the situation in Powys.

I will not shy away from the reality of the situation, what is happening to healthcare in Powys is concerning – but there is cause for optimism too.

The Welsh Government has announced a record level of funding for the Welsh NHS in its budget – over £12bn – and the First Minister has announced she is working towards cutting the number of two-year-waits on the Welsh NHS from some 23,000 to 8,000 by May this year.

Meanwhile, my office is working hard to apply pressure on speeding up the delivery of the new health and wellbeing hub for Newtown, because it should be a fundamental right for people to be able to access healthcare as locally as possible and this would be a huge boon for the town.

Living in a rural area should never preclude you from access to timely, local healthcare.

Please don’t hesitate to get in contact with me at steve.witherden.mp@parliament.uk if you want to discuss this issue with me.

Steve Witherden MP