The Blue Print

We can all agree that today has not been Rhodri Morgan’s finest.

The intervention yet again by Peter Hain must be a source of great annoyance to Plaid and Labour members who are signed up to a referendum before 2011. If he wants to put Labour out of office in Wales then the Secretary of State is going about it the right way.

The question as to who is in charge in Welsh Labour is an important one. In the chamber earlier today I said that in the leadership for the Welsh Labour party that it looks as though Peter Hain has won, and that either Carwyn, Huw or Edwina will end up as his deputy.

For all the talk of improving access to public transport for disabled people has anyone ever tried getting a train from Llandaff (North) railway station to Cardiff in a wheelchair?

I pose this question because I have been doing a survey of railway stations in the constituency to see how accessible they are. Some are ok for wheelchair users, although you may have to go around the houses, quite literally, to access them. However others such as Llandaf f (North) and Heath High Level are absolutely useless.

The bottom line is that if you are disabled and live in west part of Whitchurch or in Llandaff North then you won’t be able to get to the correct side of the platform to get the train to Cardiff. There is a footbridge but wheelchairs and steps are an unhappy mix so there’s no way of a wheelchair user getting onto the correct side.

Similarly, if you are disabled living in Heath and want to travel to a destination on the Rhymney Valley line – even if it is just to Llanishen or Thornhill, then you would have to negotiate several flights of steps just to get to the platform. There is no other way to access it.

The Disability Discrimination Act was specifically intended to break down barriers for disabled people, putting pressure on private and public organisations to make their premises and services as accessible as possible.

It is high time the UK Government in collaboration with the Assembly Government truly enforce the DDA and compel the owners of these, and other, stations to have access for wheelchair users.

An area where the Assembly Government can make a difference is by investing in platform accessibility.

The UK Government has committed itself to spending £370m over the next ten years on improving access to deliver its Accessibility Strategy for Great Britain’s Railways’, which was published’ in 2006. The strategy states that:

“The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) will specify and fund franchised passenger services within and bordering Wales from 1st April 2006. It also has the option to fund new rail investments in Wales, over and above that currently specified.”

As part of the £370 million fund, up to £7 million a year is allocated for improvements to smaller stations. Yet I have discovered that from 2006-09, only £403,348 had been spent in Wales, despite the large number of smaller inaccessible stations in this country. Yet WAG has said that it’s not its responsibility to submit bids, rather it’s the role of Arriva Trains Wales to do this.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that WAG wouldn’t play an active role in this. I would expect the Assembly Government to work in close collaboration with Arriva Trains Wales to ensure we maximise additional investment.

It’s not just about getting onto the train, its also about being able to reach the platform to get to the train in the first place!

The University Hospital of Wales in my constituency is in the news this evening for investigating & confirming a person-to-person strain of swine flu which is resistant to Tamiflu.

Having spent this afternoon on the phone to the Health Minister and to senior officials at the hospital I have been impressed with the speed at which the authorities have responded. Clearly the biggest hospital in Wales needs to ensure confidence amongst the public that it continues to be a safe environment and the thorough investigation by the National Public Health Service (NPHS) has reassured me as the Assembly Member for Cardiff North.

What we don’t know is whether this strain of Tamiflu-resistant swine flu is unique to Cardiff or whether clinicians here have been quick off the mark in identifying an issue which could also exist in other parts of the UK.

Whilst the only other person-to-person strain of Tamiflu-resistant swine flu was found in the US there is a feeling of inevitability that it would happen in Europe. What is impressive is the way this has been handled, the care being shown to those patients who are ill, the monitoring being done by NPHS and the advice being given to families.

It is important for people to feel confident in our hospital services and the response to swine flu in Wales has been professional and decisive.

The debate around the future of care for the elderly is not just important in the context for how we provide services to an increasing number of older people, but how we can support people to be as active as possible.

Many politicians visit residential care homes. I am a regular visitor to Ty Coch in Llanishen, where I spend time talking to the residents about the work I do in the Assembly and also listen to what they have to say. Today we talked about the the big care debate and what the major challenges are. It was more than useful as their experiences are current.

Paying for domiciliary and residential care is a big factor when we consider that in 20 years time the number of retired people will outnumber those in work and that half of today’s new born children will live until they are 100 years of age. The demographic picture of the UK is rapidly shifting and we are at last waking up to this major challenge which cannot be avoided by simply hiding behind the couch.

The financial question poses two problems, the first is that we don’t know how to plug a £6bn gap in expenditure just to carry on doing what we do now for a bigger audience, and second it doesn’t take into account how services might have to be re-designed in future to cope with changing expectations. Personally I don’t see how we can avoid a form of “old age insurance” but this might not be universally popular.

The group I spoke to today talked about the cost but also about the quality of life. Some residential homes are very good at providing a varied social calendar, catering for different interests. For many of the residents I know, the quality of life through activities and societal engagement is important, it’s about actually living.

I sometimes think we have traditional come at this debate from the wrong angle, looking at the cost. The problem is that we haven’t figured out first what it is we need to provide and what people might want to do in their old age.

Like many people in this country I am not too keen on our current Prime Minister.

I think he is an awful PM, unappealing, clumsy, he misunderstands the public mood, and has made some fairly dreadful errors since taking over from Blair. That said I do not think he is callous or cruel and in my view the current media frenzy around his hand written letter to the mother of Grenadier Guardsman Jamie Janes has gone too far.

I have no doubt that his handwriting is dreadful, and that he struggles with this basic task probably in part due to his eyesight. To suggest that Brown was dismissive or uncaring about the troops overseas and their families back home is simply wrong and I think that my party as the official opposition ought to be saying so.

I have no doubt that any PM who sends our troops into battle does so in the full knowledge that some will not return, it must be one of the most difficult and emotional decisions for any PM to take. Whilst it is obvious that Brown’s letter has upset the family of Jamie Janes it is not the sort of mistake that politicians would want to make.

Brown said he was mortified. Politics aside I know that all of us would feel exactly the same.

Cardiff Council’s proposals to reorganise schools in Whitchurch in my constituency are based on inaccurate information and demonstrate a worrying lack of understanding about our local education system.

At a public meeting at the high school last night the council officers’ performance (in the absence of any of the Executive members of the council) was lamentable. They struggled to explain the impact of reducing the high school from a 12 to a 9 form entry school and the potential ability to deliver all that they do now.

The document setting out their case, and which is the basis of the statutory consultation process, relies on pupil projection figures which the council has since corrected.

In 2008 the council told the Assembly Government that the pupil projection figure for 2014 for Eglwys Newydd was 320 and for Eglwys Wen 282. However figures given this year are 343 and 295 respectively. In fact all the council’s figures for these two schools have had to be revised since 2006, demonstrating the upward birthrate trend. On a matter of law I am not sure what the legal requirements are for the accuracy of data used in a statutory consultation process, but I intend finding out.

Figures aside, I see this process as an attack on good schools, a way of manipulating figures to support other less popular schools. I fail to see how schools which lack strong local parental support can be improved just by forcing their children to attend them.

We have an on-line petition to support our Whitchurch schools at: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supportwhitchurchschools/

The Assembly’s Equality of Opportunity Committee, of which I am a member, has today started an inquiry into whether people living with HIV face discrimination by health care professionals and providers.

This is an important inquiry, not least because we are dealing with a subject matter that is sensitive and one that politicians traditionally have not looked at. It’s also a tricky subject for the clinicians who provide care for people living with HIV, whether for that illness or any other that may require attention.

Two problems occurred today with the evidence. In questioning the BMA and the BDA it was clear that some professionals might not be as sensitive to the subject as they should be, a point that neither body tried to deny. A further problem was the lack (at the moment, admittedly we’ve only just started the review) of a body of substantive evidence, beyond the anecdotal information provided by organisations with an interest in the welfare of people with HIV.

The evidence provided by AIDS Trust Cymru suggests that some people are referred by their GP to a Specialist even if the medical condition is not related to the HIV, some patients are put into inappropriate infection control rooms in hospital and there are some who feel discriminated against by dentists who “triple glove”.

The committee may well struggle with this review, regardless of how worthwhile the subject matter is, because of a lack of hard data, I hope I am proved wrong.