The Welsh NHS experienced it's busiest day ever on December 27 as people were hospitalised for flu, Covid and Strep A, Wales' First Minister has said.
Speaking at his first press conference of 2023 and looking to the year ahead, Mark Drakeford said he echoed the apology made last week by the chief executive of the NHS in Wales but couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't happen again next winter. Nor were special "field hospitals" a way to ease pressure on hospital capacity.
Facing GMB strike action this week, Mr Drakeford admitted the weeks ahead will be "challenging" but said the "draconian anti strike laws" announced by the government in England last week would "trample over the devolution settlement". He said: "Unlike the UK government, the Welsh Labour government does not believe that the response to strikes should be to bring forward such restrictive backward looking laws." Mr Drakeford said he recognised the strength of feeling among balloting members and decisions to strike are never "reached lightly".
"We remain committed to working with social partnership with our trade unions to explore a way to resolve the current dispute," he added. An offer of a one-off payment was made on Friday, he confirmed. Discussions will begin this week and Mr Drakeford said he was not prepared to give away further information at this stage. But the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) wants a 19% pay rise and said the one-off payment was not "satisfactory" and would not halt strike action.
The fact that the UK government had also announced a similar payment across the border was entirely coincidental, Mr Drakeford said and his government were not simply following suit. But he did say that any pay bonus for nurses in England would mean more money for Wales - as per the Barnett Formula. He told the press conference that any "new" money would be devoted to a better pay offer in Wales.
Mr Drakeford said that the NHS was not in a "perpetual" state of crisis, but there were undoubtedly days where front line staff could be forgiven for thinking there was. There were 550 people admitted to hospitals in Wales on December 27 he said with more than 1,000 staff members off because of Covid currently. Even so, his Labour government had managed to source an extra 508 beds for the winter period and there is money in the system to go further. "It's not a money problem," he said. "The problem here is much more to do with capacity and particularly to do with staffing." Field hospitals "did not appear out of thin air ready to go" but the real challenge would be finding the staff to operate them, he added about suggestions they could help ease the backlog.
Mr Drakeford refused to say he was embarrassed about the state of the health service in Wales but admitted: "I wish things were better, I wish people didn't have to wait for the length of time that they do and I wish the physical conditions under which staff work could be better than they have been."
NHS staff in Wales unquestionably deserve higher pay awards Mr Drakeford said without hesitation when asked. "They deserve to be fairly rewarded for the valuable work they do and it is no surprise to me that a decade of austerity followed by runaway inflation has the impact that it has on people..."
The amount of money ministers are able to put on the table for recurrent pay awards is absolutely linked to England and the Barnett consequential, Mr Drakeford continued. It's why he is not in a position to offer a higher pay award that would build into NHS staff salaries.. "But we have managed to find a sum of money that would enable us to make a one off payment to out NHS staff," he said.
"It's painful, I can tell you that," Mr Drakeford admitted. "Every piece of money that we are now being able to find for negotiations with our trade union colleagues is money we don't have to spend on something else."
Despite plpoughing extra resources into the NHS, it won't be enough to stop a repeat of what we've seen this winter, Mr Drakeford said. "The story of the NHS is always a story of supply on one hand and demand on the other," he explained. He highlighted how there were 65 admissions for flu on December 4 and more than 300 on one day just three weeks later. " You are always trying to manage the supply you can put in place against the demands and the demands are not always predictable," he continued. "And in December we saw that confluence of extra flu demand, extra Covid demand, and the pent up demand that's always there over Christmas. All of that came together."
Reacting to news that Mr Drakeford and his government will be meeting health union leaders to discuss pay negotiations to end the current strikes, the Welsh Conservatives said thy were pleased talks would revolve around a one-off pay award, staff welfare, reducing agency spend, and restoring confidence in the pay review body and process.
Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies MS said: “I am pleased to hear Mark Drakeford echo an apology for the state of the Welsh NHS at the moment – but this has built up over 25 years of Labour mismanagement, leaving us with Britain’s worst ambulance response times, longest treatment waiting list, and worst A&E waits.
“It is high time the Labour Government heeded our long-standing calls to meet with unions to discuss pay to bring the strikes in the NHS to an end – and while its good they will now meet, why has is taken so long to put these topics on the table?
“Ultimately, there is long overdue recognition that decisions over NHS pay is the responsibility of Labour ministers in Cardiff Bay and it should not have taken this long to get to this point with nurses, ambulance workers, and midwives all voting to take industrial action in Wales."
Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru said the decision not to offer a pay rise was "a matter of priorities". Party leader Adam Price MS said: "A one-off payment does not address the long-term undervaluing of our NHS workforce and does nothing to address the crisis of recruitment and retention. We will simply be back again to square one when next year's pay negotiations begin in a matter of a few weeks."
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