Making policy

Written by Jenny Randerson and published in Western Mail on Wed 30th Jan 2008

The period after an Assembly Election always provides Assembly Members and Welsh political parties as a whole, a real opportunity to review their long standing policies and priorities for the country.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats are now taking the opportunity to look ahead at developing policies for the next Assembly Elections in 2011. In my role as Health Spokesperson for the party, Mike German has asked me to initiate a root and branch review of our policies on health and social care. A full policy review is something that any sensible party has to go through. The NHS is now sixty years old, and the Wales that we live in today is very different to how it was then. The pressures, patient-expectations, treatments and technologies have changed beyond all recognition. Just as Ron Davies proclaimed that devolution is a process not an event, policy makers must accept that developing health policy must also be seen as a process not an event.

Constituents come to me regularly with horror stories about the modern NHS, yet nearly all are proud of the principal of our system. We must be bold about solving 21st Century problems. We cannot solve them with 20th Century ideas, whether they are guided by experiences in a different age, or by dogmatic commitment to political ideology. That is why my review of Welsh Liberal Democrat Policy will be far reaching and bold. At this stage, I can not predict how the review's findings will shape up. I will be working with experts from across the field of health and social care as well as patients. I will be presenting policy proposals to the party's membership for amendment or endorsement.

Mike German announced policy reviews not only in Health, but in education, as well as other areas. The party is looking at how we can better represent local opinions and deal with local problems within National services. As Mike said at the time: "Services in Aberystwyth will be different from those in Barry, which will be different again Wrexham." Without wanting to prejudge the results of my review, I believe that the way forward for the Welsh NHS is to react to the local demands with the local services they require.

The big issues that the Welsh NHS will face in the coming years are wide ranging, and hence, the big issues that my review must seek to deal with will be wide ranging too. Not only my party, but all policy makers must look at the future of LHBs and ask whether they can be reformed to commission effectively from the new super-trusts? We also need to think big on whether Local Authorities should be givenresponsibility for primary and community care, or whether the emerging Local Service Boards are best placed to deal with this. The key issues for me are to ensure a local voice and local accountability for services which are sensitive to local needs. My priority is to tackle the need to provide both NHS and Social Services as a seemless whole which is certainly not the case at present. As Welsh Liberal Democrats we primarily believe in localism and the need for the patient to have a voice in decision making, but we also recognise the need for clinicians to have greater autonomy, with less government meddling in clinical priorities.

These are just some of the many, many issues that I will be looking at. My review will take over a year and will hopefully put forward some bold and radical policies for a better future for patients. We can not get stuck in the past. As a Liberal Democrat, my beliefs are founded on one of the oldest political philosophies in the world, but as an individual and a party, we will not be constrained by the old ideas and ways of doing things. We will design policies for now and the coming years, not for 1948, not even for 1998, and we will offer them to the electorate in 2011.