Croeso i Gymru, an open letter to Jeremy Hunt

Dear Jeremy,

Croeso i Gymru! That’s Welsh for Welcome to Wales! We’re not sure if you have been here before, so we thought we would give you some helpful pointers. You are now in Llangollen. Yes, it is a bit tricky. Just roll your tongue, you can do it. Llan-goll-en.

You’ll be spending a lot of time this weekend (or is it just the hour you’ve come for?) in the Royal Pavilion, home to the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and one of the world’s great cultural festivals – something we’re all very proud of locally!

We’re also very pleased with the fantastic Jobs Growth Wales scheme, which gives young people a six month work placement. There are plenty of businesses nearby who have benefited from this policy – and plenty of young people who would be happy to talk to you about how it has helped turn their lives around. We decided to create this scheme after you axed the Future Jobs Fund, because we didn’t want to leave young people without help in the midst of a terrible global recession. So far, over 10,000 people have benefited from our decision.

Now, you’ve been spending a lot of time talking about the Welsh NHS recently. We will hazard a guess that you will be talking about it again today. Therefore we are writing to you in the hope that your contribution is well informed. Sadly, a number of things you, Grant Shapps, Michael Green and the Prime Minister have said recently have been completely wrong. No wonder you are now asking your officials to write to us to check your facts! You just can’t get the staff.

http://www.itv.com/news/wales/2014-04-07/prime-ministers-bungling-dirty-tricks-briefing-slammed-by-welsh-government/

A few miles to the north of here is a town called Wrexham. It is a nice big town, with a university, a football club and a hospital. Judging by some of your recent comments, what you won’t know is this: patients from England get treated in that hospital every day. Everything from a nasty fall, right up to upper gastro-intestinal (GI) cancer surgery. We just want you to know that we are fine with that. There are some things we believe in over here – the union, solidarity and the NHS are three of them. So for the 20,000 English patients registered with Welsh GPs, we say that’s fine. The 30,000 English patients who use Welsh A&E services? That’s fine too. It would be nice therefore, when Welsh patients are treated in England, if you and your Tory colleagues would refrain from calling them health refugees. Because that’s offensive, Jeremy.

One thing though. A few miles east of here is the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, which our constituents will need to access from time to time. The Trust is currently classed “High Risk” – we’d be grateful if you could have a look at that.

There are some worrying health issues on the horizon. That much is true. An obesity time bomb for one. Our aging population for another (you might be surprised to learn, given some of the things you say about devolution and healthcare, that life expectancy has gone up in Wales by a few months for every year of devolved Government). Permit us to suggest that these are not Welsh problems, or English problems – they are just problems. It might even be nice for us to work together to have a think about how we might tackle these issues. We’re guessing that this is what the public in England and Wales would like. We will forget for a minute that you’ve cut the Welsh Government budget by £1.7bn, and then complain that our NHS spending is struggling to meet demand – and just focus on the issues. How about it?

We’ve attached some information you might find interesting about the National Health Service in Wales, and we’ve also attached a list of things you might want to look at in the English NHS – because we’re worried that you have forgotten about it.  

Yours sincerely, 

Susan Elan Jones,                                          Ken Skates

MP for Clwyd South                                       AM for Clwyd South