Downgrading of Llandudno hospital to be stopped

I am glad to say that Welsh Conservatives have pledged to halt Labour's plans for hospital reconfiguration across Wales, including any plans for the downgrading of services at Llandudno Hospital.

Instead, the party has promised to hold 'proper dialogue' with clinicians, health bodies, and local people about the shape of medical services across the country. Only after those discussions, and only with a proper consensus from local people, will a decision be taken on how best to deliver local health services within Conwy.

To date, it has become clear that Labour's plans for hospital reconfiguration have been ill thought-out and inadequate and that their programme of closures and hospital downgrading has undermined public confidence in the NHS. Politicians should be taken out of the day-to-day running of the health service, insisting that decisions over how the NHS is run are best taken at as local a level as possible.

The Welsh Conservatives have made the NHS their number one priority in the election campaign and it clear that the people of Aberconwy want more funding to go directly to frontline services and not backroom burueaucracy. Thanks to a system where there is one administrator for every three doctors or nurses within the NHS in North Wales, we now have one of the most bureaucratic and convoluted health systems in Europe.

There has been an overwhelming positive public response from the people of Aberconwy to the Welsh Conservatives' policy document NH yeS, which has highlighted plans to give doctors greater powers to prescribe modern medicines, pilot nurse-led NHS walk-in centres, and to putting doctors and nurses at the forefront of the day-to-day management of the health service.

However, it is vitally important that the position on Llandudno Hospital is reiterated again before the Assembly election so that everyone knows exactly where the Conservative Party stands on this important issue.

Like many others during the last twelve months, I have made it absolutelty clear that the whole process of consultation over Llandudno Hospital has been ill-thought out and inadequate, with no proper local involvement on decisions affecting patient care .

Let me make therefore make it absolutely clear that we will halt Labour's plans for any reconfiguration of the NHS in North Wales, including the downgrading of services at Llandudno Hospital.

Most importantly, we will establish a proper dialogue on the future shape of medical services in Llandudno involving clinicians, the CHC and local people in a thorough and genuine debate on the provision of medical services in our community.

It is the very least that the people of Llandudno deserve after having their concerns completely ignored by the consulotation process".