NHS Wales to get £145m boost for waiting lists and hubs

An extra £145m will be spent on NHS Wales this financial year, the Welsh government has said.

Plaid Cymru Health minister Mabon ap Gwynfor said the funding would help tackle long waits for treatment and speed up diagnoses.

The package includes £100m to reduce waiting times, with £25m earmarked for new surgical and diagnostic hubs.

The latest NHS Wales performance figures show the total number of people waiting for treatment rose by just over 13,000 in April to about 680,000, after 10 consecutive months of decline.

The previous Labour government spent an extra £120m to the end of March to bring waits down, but these figures show they rose the following month.

Welsh Labour interim leader Ken Skates said: "NHS waiting lists have fallen in Wales for the past 10 months, people are being seen faster because of the hard work of NHS staff and investment from the last Welsh Labour government."

Reform Wales shadow health minister James Evans said: "After propping up the previous Labour government and backing its budgets, this new Plaid administration must now take responsibility for the immense pressure our health service is under."

The number of two-year waits for treatment also rose during April, rising from 2,589 in March to 3,694 in April.

The figures also include the picture for emergency care in May, which included the first few weeks of the new government.

In that time performance against four-hour and 12-hour targets in emergency departments in Wales also deteriorated.

Almost half of the Welsh government's £27bn budget for 2026-27 is spent on the NHS and social care, with Plaid Cymru inheriting Welsh Labour's spending plan.

The funding commitment boost is part of the Welsh government's supplementary budget for this financial year.

The government says £20m of capital funding will also be spent on "essential maintenance" across the NHS estate.

The minister said this is for things such as mobile scanners, ageing equipment that needs upgrading, to help tackle backlogs.

Ap Gwynfor said £100m would be spent on getting 24-month waits down "in the short term and then putting more capacity into the system so that we do not reach that point again".

Interviewed by BBC Wales the health minister criticised the previous Welsh Labour government, saying it had "looked at the problem and put a sticking plaster on it".

"They were just concentrating on short term solutions without dealing with long term problems," he said.

"What we're doing is putting money into that early intervention so that we don't reach that position again, making sure that we improve the diagnostics, that we identify those pathways and validate them properly so that people get put on the right lists, getting the right treatment instead of languishing on a long list for several years."

The Welsh government plans include developing up to 10 surgical and diagnostic hubs over the next four years.

Labour's Ken Skates said: "NHS waiting lists have fallen in Wales for the past 10 months, people are being seen faster because of the hard work of NHS staff and investment from the last Welsh Labour government.

"The Plaid Cymru government said they had a costed plan but they can't even get their story straight about how long it'll take for waiting lists to fall.

"Reviews and consultations won't cut it, people want to see action."

James Evans from Reform said: "These figures should be a wakeup call to this Plaid Cymru government - two-year waits are rising, cancer treatment performance has deteriorated, thousands of patients are enduring excessive waits in A&E, and ambulance response times remain too slow.

"After propping up the previous Labour government and backing its budgets, this new Plaid administration must now take responsibility for the immense pressure our health service is under.

"Reform Wales will continue to hold this government to account and fight for the timely, high-quality healthcare that the people of Wales deserve."

Ap Gwynfor said he cannot guarantee jobs for newly qualified paramedics, nurses and midwives in the Welsh NHS.

He was speaking before an NHS graduate summit in Cardiff, where health officials are expected to discuss workforce issues.

A recent recruitment freeze left some newly trained staff looking for work elsewhere.

Ap Gwynfor said graduates should not be in that position, blaming decisions made by the previous Labour government.

However, when asked whether he could guarantee jobs for those seeking work, he said: "No, we can't guarantee that."

He said the summit would bring employers together to identify as many opportunities as possible and help ensure the same situation does not arise again.

"None of those graduates should be in this position," he said. "Part of the summit today is looking at the current graduates, but more importantly making sure that we don't reach this point in the future."

The Plaid Cymru-led Welsh government plans to publish the first part of an NHS workforce plan in the autumn.

Ap Gwynfor also called on NHS bosses to "take control immediately" of a north Wales hospital emergency department following serious concerns about patient safety.

The unit at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Denbighshire has been designated as needing significant improvements over issues including leadership, governance, culture and overcrowding following an inspection last month.

The health minister told BBC Wales he was disappointed and expected Betsi Cadwaladr health board chiefs to act.

Ap Gwynfor said he wanted to assure people that the emergency unit was safe to attend and government officials were monitoring the situation "regularly".

Additional reporting by Jenny Rees and Dan Moffat