Sparks fly over new advisory board

Opposition AMs have accused Health Minister Edwina Hart of trying to politicise the health service by creating a top-level board to oversee a new-look NHS.

The Tories and Liberal Democrats said Mrs Hart was trying to interfere in the day-to-day running of the health service by chairing the new national advisory board.

The panel, which will meet in public, is part of the Assembly Government's attempt to scrap the internal market in the NHS.

In a statement to AMs, Mrs Hart admitted that most of the feedback to her plans recommended putting the service in the hands of an arms-length special health authority.

"I disagree," she said. "In a devolved Wales it is both impracticable and undesirable to attempt to create such a distance between political responsibility and service delivery."

She revealed previously that she plans to scrap the 22 local health boards created in 2003, and provide services instead through a new tier of seven local health organisations.

Mrs Hart said her board would have a "small, independent membership" and would "improve the accountability and transparency of the NHS".

The new structure would "open government up to scrutiny". "And I think that is what the public want," she said.

During heated exchanges in the Senedd, Lib Dem health spokeswoman Jenny Randerson said: "We reject totally this socialist innovation of a centrally-controlled NHS - a hugely politicised NHS - which is so at odds with the public's wishes and the wishes expressed by those people who responded to the consultation whose time, basically minister, you totally wasted."

Shadow health minister Jonathan Morgan said the minister's new post would mean "politicisation of the National Health Service in a way I never thought possible, and that causes me a great deal of concern about the future of the National Health Service".

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