Last week was Assembly recess and I had a number of private meetings with constituents across North Wales.
On behalf of the Welsh Conservatives I reiterate our thanks to the emergency services, volunteers and to people in communities across North Wales who rallied round to support those affected by the flooding and horrific weather of recent weeks.
The 2019 UK Conservative Party Manifesto pledged £100 billion investment in additional infrastructure spending, including £4 billion in new funding for flood defences.
The Welsh Government is responsible for flood warnings and flood prevention in Wales.
The Welsh Conservatives have a three-point plan to enable communities to recover and to prevent flash floods in the future:
- Support families and businesses to overcome this terrible event by making sure funding is available to councils, emergency services and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to get through the initial stages of the clean-up operation.
- Work with UK Government to ensure insurance companies are quick to react to claims and where people could not get insurance create a funding stream to enable people to get back on their feet.
- In the longer-term put a rate relief scheme in place to help businesses get back up a running. Work with NRW to understand the actions required to mitigate these flash floods and reverse the cuts to NRW budget contained in this year’s budget.
Many people have lost everything. We must respond positively to the pleas for help and be that helping hand to put people lives and communities back together.
A & E and referral-to-treatment figures for January 2020 were published last week, and, for the second month running, the worst-performing hospital is Wrexham Maelor, with nearly half (47.3 percent) of patients missing the four-hour target. It was closely followed by Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Denbighshire at 46.5 percent missing the target.
The troubled Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board – which has been in special measures since June 2015 – was again the worst-performing health board with just 68.7 percent of patients being seen within the critical four-hour period.
It also kept its unenviable position as the worst performing health board when it came to the 12-hour target, with some 6,882 patients forced to wait more than 12 hours for treatment, which is worse than in December, a figure that the Welsh Labour Government was forced to acknowledge as the highest number on record.
Both patients and staff in North Wales deserve so much better.
If you need my help, please email [email protected] or call 0300 200 7219.
