"Initiativitis" needs urgent treatment if waiting times are to drop

12.00.00am GMT Tue 18th Jan 2005

Rhodri Morgan came under fire for his government's failure to tackle Wales' long waiting lists at First Minister's Questions today.

Mike German, Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly leader, led the charge asking whether the "initiative-itis" highlighted in the National Audit Office's report would be receiving urgent treatment.

He said: "Your previous minister for health was renowned for distributing little pots of money around the health service, to tackle whatever problems concerned her most that day. The NAO report is at its most damning when it considers this approach. It says: "the widespread use of waiting time initiatives using non-recurrent funding has provided neither good value for money nor sustainable reductions in waiting times." I asked you last week what guidance you had offered Brian Gibbons and you wouldn't say. Can you at least confirm that you have asked to treat the spread of initiative-itis that has so crippled the NHS in Wales?"

Mr German also quoted the report which stated that 'Initiatives treat the symptom rather than the cause of long waiting times: reinforcing the balance in the way current services are set up'.

After Mr German had opened the line of attack, other party leaders followed in his footsteps, pressing the issue with an increasingly irate First Minister. Mr Morgan said changes in the way the NHS buys treatment from the private sector had changed since the NAO's report was written.

Speaking afterwards, Mr German said: "It is simply not good enough for Rhodri to say that 'the audit report is history, and the World has changed'. We have now had damning reports from the Audit Commission, Derek Wanless and the National Audit Office. We have a shelf-full of reports, all saying the same thing - that something is wrong with our health policy. We have the diagnosis, what we need is a remedy of the government's health policy."