00:00Okay, order David Chadwick to move the motion.
00:06Thank you Mr. Dowd, it is a moment to serve under your chairmanship.
00:10Last year, hopes were raised that two Labour governments working together would put an end to conflict between Cardiff and Westminster.
00:19And yet few issues trouble my constituents more than the daily reality of cross-border healthcare between England and Wales.
00:26Paris is a beautiful county, but it is also the largest in Wales, with no district general hospital of its own.
00:34Nearly 40% of the health board's budget is spent commissioning services across the border in Hereford and Shropshire, because that's where the nearest hospitals are.
00:43So when coordination between the Welsh and UK government fails, it is Paris patients who feel it first and feel it hardest.
00:51Will my honourable friend give way?
00:52Yes, of course.
00:53Michelle Gilmore.
00:53Thank you for giving way.
00:54Of course my honourable friend is making a point about the border between England and Wales, but I represent a constituent who lives in a spot which is equidistant between two hospitals in Exeter and Taunton.
01:05Only one hospital could provide the treatment she needed, but the consultant there then recommended rehabilitation at a third hospital across the border in Tiverton.
01:14After a lengthy back and forth, she was allowed treatment on the grounds of extenuating services.
01:18Will my honourable friend join me in pressing for a clear binding system to allow seamless cross-border referrals where clinically appropriate?
01:26She makes a very valid point, and I'm sure her constituents will be very, very pleased to hear it.
01:34The 2018 cross-border statement of values and principles promised that no patient would face delay or disadvantage because of which side of the border they live on.
01:42And my constituents know that those principles are not being applied in practice.
01:48The clearest recent example of what's gone wrong is the new waiting list policy introduced by the Paris Teaching Health Board this summer.
01:55From the 1st of July, the board instructed English hospitals treating Paris residents to deliberately and artificially extend their waiting times, bringing them into line with the longer averages elsewhere in Wales.
02:09Until now, Paris patients had been treated in hospitals like Hereford and Shrewsbury in exactly the same way as English patients, but from this summer they've been asked to wait up to twice as long.
02:21Well, we're told that hospitals in Herefordshire and Shrewsbury are treating Welsh patients too quickly, that Paris' budget does not allow for the current numbers of people being treated per year, so patients have to be spread out over more years.
02:36What an appalling phrase it is to say that a patient can be treated too quickly.
02:41Swift treatment should be an objective and not a problem.
02:45And worse still, this supposed cost-cutting exercise may not save a penny because both the Y Valley NHS Trust and the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust believe it could actually cost Paris more because they will have to bill Paris Teaching Health Board for the administrative cost of running two parallel waiting list systems.
03:04And that's, of course, before we consider the hidden costs, the human and financial price of patients deteriorating while they wait longer, needing emergency admissions, extended rehabilitation, and in some cases, never recovering the quality of life that they once had.
03:20My constituents are not just numbers on a spreadsheet, their lives are on hold.
03:26Those months are months of agony, of lost work, of isolation, of watching opportunities and life slip away while waiting for operations that should already have happened.
03:36Agnes is a patient from Klandrindod with Parkinson's disease, who's been told that she must wait another...
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