Welsh Liberal blogs

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have today called on the Welsh Government to boost support for local and independent media through an increase of public health communications spending. Since the outbreak of Covid-19 huge work has been done by both the UK and Welsh Government's to ensure public health information is relayed to the public through a variety of sources. These moves have included getting major media groups onboard to help share information, but many local press organisations and individual journalists have raised that support for them has been much less forthcoming. In repsonse the Welsh Liberal Democrats are calling for the Welsh Government to pledge that a proportionate share of spending on public health advertising will go to local newspapers and news organisations. This would result in both a short-term boost to the Government’s public health communications as well as a long-term investment in protecting and maintaining local media across Wales. We...

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have criticised the length of NHS Wales waiting times following the release of January’s A&E data showing waiting times to be the worst on record having risen yet again. 6,882 patients across NHS Wales waited more than 12 hours in A&E to be treated, transferred and discharged. This is 226 more people than in December. NHS Wales targets specify no-one should need wait that long. 83.5% of patients were waiting less than six months to start hospital treatment, substantially less than the 95% target. Whilst 5.5% of patients waited more than 36 weeks from the hospitals’ receipt of the referral letter. Jane Dodds, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, commented: A&E waiting times are unacceptable. Every patient forced to wait in overcrowded hospital waiting rooms and corridors is a patient being let down by the very service built to support them. We know pressures on the NHS are always greater in winter, but these new figures clearly s...