More change at the top would be a disaster for ambulance service

Written by Jenny Randerson and published in Western Mail on Mon 30th Jun 2008

Last month, the Minister for Health launched an unprecedented media assault to distance herself from the ongoing problems in the Welsh Ambulance Service. The Minister told the Service that it had six months to start delivering improvements or face the consequences. The Welsh Ambulance Service has been in ongoing crisis for many years and saw four different Chief Executives during 2006. In August of that year, the Trust appointed Alan Murray, the Former boss of the Northern Ireland Service and renowned "trouble-shooter".

Alan Murray took at the lowest ebb for the service. It had been subject to damning criticism and Mr Murray's predecessor had lasted a matter of months. Alan Murray has managed to stay in post for what is almost a record amount of time. His approach to the job has been highly original and energetic. Almost every time that I have criticised the service in the Chamber or in the press, I have received information from him explaining that he is aware of the problems and outlining how he has proposed dealing with them. On another occasion, I wrote to Mr Murray about problems a constituent, who is a paramedic, was having with his job. Mr Murray arranged to meet with the paramedic personally, at his base station, in order to try and deal with the problems he was having.

WAG has put in significant amounts of extra capital funding to improve vehicles and equipment, however the ambulance Service is shouldering a massive burden in the form of debt which has to be repaid following overspends in previous years. Last year they had to make savings of £12m from within their budget and this year, required savings have risen to a massive £17m. This equates to approximately 9% of their budget and is proportionately the biggest saving required of any Trust in Wales.

In short, there are still huge problems for the service, but two things are very clear to me. Firstly, the bulk of the fault for this lies with the Assembly Government and their unwillingness to back up their demands on the service to improve with the funding that is needed to do it, and secondly, if Alan Murray was to leave the post now, it would be absolutely catastrophic for the service.

When Edwina Hart stood up in the Chamber and issued the ultimatum, I was sure that at some point in the statement, she would give her clear backing to Alan Murray and the work that he and the hundreds of dedicated staff within the service have been doing to turn things around, But as her speech went on, it became clear that she was too concerned with looking "tough" to do this.

By the end of the day, I was deeply worried that Alan Murray would resign, though thankfully, he has not. Another paramedic constituent also came to see me last week to let me know how disastrous he felt it would be for the service if Alan Murray resigned now.

The last thing that the service needs is another period of instability and change. I believe that the Minister now needs to make a very strong statement showing that she recognises this and giving Alan Murray and all the hard working Paramedics, technicians and support staff the support that they deserve. Perhaps at the same time, she could announce the funding that the Ambulance Service needs if it is to overcome the problems and meet the Minister's demands within six months.