I was delighted to be appointed as the Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care for the Welsh Conservatives, a role I am already getting stuck into, shaping policy and providing a real alternative to this failing Welsh Labour Government.

It is clear to almost everyone in Wales that our health service is in crisis.

The equivalent of one in four people in Wales are languishing on an NHS waiting list, the number of people waiting for 2 years for treatment remains unacceptably high despite that number being all but eliminated in England and stories about vulnerable people waiting in pain for an ambulance are far too frequent in the news.

Despite this, the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay has refused to declare a health emergency.

The first step to reversing the decline of our NHS is in accepting and acknowledging the failures of the last 26 years of Labour in Wales and deploying the entire force of the Welsh Government in tackling these issues, this can only be achieved by declaring an emergency.

This is a matter of life and death for far too many people.

The Welsh Government, propped up by Plaid Cymru, keep talking about their funding increases, but in actual fact our frontline services are facing a real terms cut when taking inflation into account as well as the cost of the higher National Insurance Contributions. It is clear that neither Labour or Plaid have a practical plan to fix our Welsh NHS.

Last week, I wrote to Monmouthshire County Council calling on them to follow both Denbighshire and Conwy councils in declaring a health emergency.

Council’s all declaring this emergency would send a clear message to the Labour Government the managed decline of our health service cannot continue.

Back in 2019, the Welsh Government boasted of the fact that it declared a Climate Emergency in Wales, so why cannot it do the same for Health?

We really need a whole government approach to tackling this crisis, much like we did over the COVID Pandemic. We cannot let isolated Government policies try and take a small piece by piece approach to tackling the crisis that our NHS is under, that approach has clearly failed.

We need to tie in different aspects into improving health in Wales, such as improving preventative measures.

This is a matter that affects everyone in Wales, from patients to our NHS staff, and we need a Government willing to take this seriously. Only the Welsh Conservatives can Fix Our NHS.