On Wednesday 4 February the Assembly Government’s Health Minister was questioned on the appalling performance of the Ambulance Trust by Welsh Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Minister, Peter Black. He demanded to know why she had been sitting for over a year on two bids for capital investment that could make a huge difference to ambulance response times. Her answer was revealing:
Edwina Hart: I do not think that there is a budgetary issue with the ambulance trust. It is a question of the management of the service in many areas. I have invested the capital that has been requested of me by the ambulance trust—a great deal of additional capital has gone in over the years. The figures are dreadful, but it has also experienced a very difficult period, and we must acknowledge that those front-line staff have had a difficult time over the past few weeks. It is very easy to look at the figures and criticise, but at the end of the day, we are working with the trust to try to make improvements. I wish that the improvements were happening more quickly than they are, but I think that we will make progress over the next 12 months.
Under further questioning the Minister was even more adamant that she was not going to bale out the ambulance service with extra money:
As far as I am concerned, the ambulance trust has resources to make it function and it should get on and function.
It did not take her long to perform a u-turn. Yesterday the Minister announced that an extra £10.5m is being handed to the Welsh ambulance service by the assembly government to cut the time it takes to reach patients in emergencies. The cash will buy satellite navigation, location systems and mobile data terminals for all emergency ambulances.
Perhaps if she had not spent a year deliberating on the ambulance services bid and made her decision earlier then we would already have seen an improvement in response times. We will never know.
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