Health board reorganisation would distract from front-line care, First Minister tells Senedd
The First Minister has confirmed she considered restructuring Wales’s health board system while serving as health secretary but decided against it because it would distract from front-line services.
Eluned Morgan told the Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister on 13 March that she had looked at the question but concluded that reorganisation would pull focus away from reducing waiting lists.
The exchange was prompted by Conservative MS Peter Fox, who told the committee he had been asked about the health board structure at a Royal College of Nursing event the previous evening.
“The question that was put to me was: with so many health boards in intervention, especially Betsi Cadwaladr and the issues there, is it the right shape?” Fox said.
“Should our health board system – should we rethink the health board system? Should there be something better in Wales?”
He described the issue as having been “a millstone around every Minister’s neck since I’ve been in this place.”
The first minister acknowledged the case for change could be made.
“Certainly when I was health Secretary, it was something that I considered,” she said. “Is now the time to rethink the shape? You can certainly make the case for reorganising.”
But she said she had chosen to focus on waiting lists instead.
“I looked at those waiting lists and thought, ‘That’s what I’m going to be focused on,’” she said. “Those are coming down. I’m going to be spending my time on sorting that out as far as we can with the money we have available.”
She warned that reorganisation would lead to internal disruption. “I just know that what would happen within those health boards is that people would be scrambling around to check out are their own jobs safe; they would not be focused on the front-line services,” she said.
Fox asked directly: “So, it’s the wrong time?”
Morgan replied: “It’s a judgment call in terms of whether you do that or not. I am focused on what is happening on the front line, and anything that takes attention away from that is something that I didn’t want to get involved with. Other people may make a different judgment; that was my judgment, definitely during this term of Government.”
She pointed to co-operation already happening between health boards, including closer working between Hywel Dda and Swansea Bay, and the three south-east Wales boards sharing a new orthopaedic hub in Llantrisant.
The question has particular weight in north Wales. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which covers Wrexham, Flintshire, Denbighshire, Gwynedd, Conwy and Anglesey, has been in special measures or enhanced monitoring for much of the past decade.
Morgan’s formulation that “other people may make a different judgment” leaves the door open for a future government to revisit the question after the Senedd election.
Elsewhere in the session, Plaid Cymru’s Llyr Gruffydd challenged Morgan on governance, noting that the sixth Senedd had seen three First Ministers, three health secretaries and four economy secretaries.
Morgan acknowledged “there was a difficult period for the Labour Party” but said policy had remained consistent.
“What you’ve had is consistency in terms of policy as well, and that makes a difference,” she said.
“It makes a difference to investment and it makes a difference to our ability to get things done.”
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