No-brainer

HCW recommended that Wales should have one neurosurgery unit in Cardiff and that the unit presently based at Swansea’s Morriston Hospital should be closed down. A vocal campaign in Swansea, orchestrated by the local newspaper, would appear to have succeeded in persuading Mrs Hart to reject HCW’s conclusions.

Mrs Hart, whose Gower constituency is immediately adjacent to Swansea, says that both the South Wales units can be retained if neurosurgery patients from North Wales, who currently travel to Liverpool’s excellent Walton hospital, are treated at either Swansea or Cardiff. She apparently regards this as an “all Wales solution”.

I don’t know how often Mrs Hart has been to North Wales, but if she had any experience at all of the nightmare that is the A470, she would not regard her proposals as in any sense a “solution” for North Walian neurosurgery patients. At best, the road journey from Colwyn Bay to Cardiff takes four hours – probably much longer in an ambulance. Walton, by contrast, is no more than a ninety minute drive down a dual carriageway.

It looks very much as though North Wales patients and their families are to be put to wholly unacceptable inconvenience simply to ensure that Mrs Hart’s local hospital retains a neurosurgery unit. Mrs Hart had better brace herself for a tidal wave of protest from the uncharted territory that lies to the north of Merthyr Tydfil.