Welsh Ambulance Service

One of the things I have enjoyed most in my four years in the National Assembly has been the Audit Committee. Not only, as I have joked in the Chamber on more than one occasion, because there are no Ministers on it, but also because we get good analytical material from officials working for the Wales Audit Office who support our committee. We get to see how public money is actually being spent in Wales, and our recommendations get acted on by government departments, and we identify ways of spending public money more sensibly.

Today our report on the Ambulance service is published. The BBC summary is good. We are highly critical of the past management of the service, identifying that the key problems have been:

caused by weaknesses in all areas of management practice and not by a lack of resources.

This concurs with what paramedics have told me locally. We have nothing but praise for the paramedics themselves, but the way the service historically has been run is a disgrace.

I would provide links to the Report and our Press Release. but I can't find either of them on the National Assembly website, still one of the worst in the Western world.