RECENTLY the system of assessing how quickly emergency ambulances reach patients facing life threatening situations was dramatically altered. This change followed years of failing to hit the minimum targets.

Apparently the change had nothing to do with the political embarrassment of monthly reports of delays and queues of ambulances at hospital doors.

When these easier targets were challenged by Plaid Cymru the Labour ministers said the old system was years out of date but didn’t explain why the changes had not occurred earlier. Naturally they also didn’t mention that cancer targets had also been made easier to achieve.

Now it has emerged that if you are a patient in Wales the time spent waiting for diagnostic tests can be massively longer than for a patient in Scotland or England.

A MRI scan is a good example. In England less than one per cent of patients wait longer than six weeks. In Wales the figure is 32 per cent.

For a cystoscopy, a specialist bladder examination, the figures are 6.4 per cent in England and a huge 52 per cent in Wales. So the pledge by Elin Jones Plaid Health spokeswoman that a Plaid Government would bring Welsh care levels for diagnostics up to the UK level is very welcome.

It is simply not acceptable for Welsh waiting times to be substantially longer than elsewhere.

Labour ministers have let people down for far too long. This means that people who are worried about potential illnesses are waiting far too long for the diagnosis.

Plaid would seek to match the highest standards across the UK and ensure that people receive cancer diagnoses with 28 days.

Chris Franks

Dinas Powys