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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The Welsh NHS has taken a bit of a knocking from politicians and the press in recent months. The government in Wales is led by Labour and so the Conservatives are using that as an example of what could happen when Labour are in charge, as they say.  Well yesterday Ed Miliband accepted the NHS has big challenges to meet, he said.  So what is the problem?  Well the Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones, joins me now from Llandudno, a very good morning to you Mr Jones. Now I know that you’ve pointed out that since devolution you have doubled spending on the NHS, you have 4000 more nurses, 1000 more consultants.  You’ve done all that and it’s still performing poorly, what’s going wrong?

CARWYN JONES: Well there are challenges but then there are challenges in England as well.  If you look at some of the problems that have happened there, the Bristol Children’s Hospital, the scandal that’s occurred there, there are challenges both sides of the border with the NHS but in Wales for example you wait a shorter time to see a cancer specialist, you pay a lot less for social care and once statistic I always say is this, there are 20,000 people living in England who choose to register with Welsh GPs, they are in effect refugees from the English NHS.  Let’s not pretend this is about the National Health Service, this is about the general election campaign next year where you have a party that wants to be elected across the whole of the UK, that has as part of its electoral strategy hammering one part of the UK, Wales first and it’ll be Scotland next. 

DM: But we’ve got to look at the personal side of this, to cut through the PR speak, the word challenges – if you get challenges in the health service people end up dying because of it, don’t they?

CARWYN JONES: Well the health service can never be perfect, let’s be honest about that.  What we’ve done with the people of Wales is be up-front about those challenges.  We’ve kept the same number of nurses and doctors in England, four and a half thousand nurses have been sacked over the course of the last year, there are health trusts that are going belly up, the Audit Office saying you can’t trust the figures in terms of A&E, in terms of mortality rates in England so we can all play this game but what concerns me here in Wales, because Wales is being hammered as a nation. 

DM: Okay but we are talking about Wales here, let’s talk about Wales and the personal side of things, we all know about Anne Clwyd and the awful experience she had with her husband who she said was neglected to die in terrible circumstances in hospital.  That’s what happens when you face challenges and don’t deal with them, that’s what happens when you have waiting lists that are too long for diagnostic tests and things like that, people die. 

CARWYN JONES: Well first of all, nobody knows the circumstances regarding Anne’s husband.  I know she has raised a complaint and it is important that is investigated but the full report hasn’t been published and the staff in that hospital haven’t been able to put their side of the argument so we don’t know what the full picture is yet.  But of course there are problems that occur now and again in the Welsh NHS as they do in England.  It’s not as if the English NHS is absolutely perfect, what’s important is …

DM: There you go again, let’s talk about Wales. 

CARWYN JONES: … that where there are problems they are dealt with.  Well yes, I would love to talk about Wales but all the London Conservatives are doing is talking about Wales and not talking about what’s happening in their own patch in England.  What I’m saying to you is there are issues that arise, there are problems that arise and it’s important they are dealt with as quickly as possible and that the government don’t try to hide them, that’s not what’s happening in England.  What’s happening is let’s ignore the problems of the NHS there, let’s attack Wales.  That’s the …

DM: Well you talk about examples of poor care, what are they?   What are the examples of poor care in Wales. 

CARWYN JONES: Diagnostics you’ve mentioned, that much is true, we need to do more to ensure for example that complaints are investigated promptly because it’s true to say that the complaints system does not function properly.  We always need to make sure of course that the service delivers the best for the people of Wales and that’s of course what we’re trying to do, bear in mind our budget has been cut by 7.5% over three years as well, that doesn’t help so yes, I’m not going to say to you today that the Welsh NHS is absolutely perfect and we don’t need to worry. Yes, there are issues that need to be dealt with but let’s not pretend that there are issues that are unique to Wales.

DM: Okay, fair enough.  I want to ask you a question about Scotland now because we’ve got Alex Salmond coming on the programme a bit later and of course you’ll follow I know with close interest the whole debate about whether an independent Scotland could join the pound or not.  Of course if they do leave, if Scotland do vote yes, it would be the Welsh and English and Northern Irish pound, what would the Welsh view be about the Scots trying to keep it?

CARWYN JONES:  Well I’m concerned about having a currency union where two governments in effect have control over one currency, I think that’s a recipe for problems particularly if you have, for example, the crisis that we had in 2008, how do you take decisions very, very quickly?  That is a real issue.   We have a situation now where Scotland obviously has its vote in September, we have a view in Wales, we wouldn’t want to lose Scotland out of the UK, I think that would unbalance the UK and a lot of work would have to be done to get that balance right once again.  So I hope the people of Scotland vote no.  It’s a matter for them at the end of the day but I would say look, stay with us in the UK, with Northern Ireland as well, with England – we can all have our own strong identities, no problem with that, but it’s better for us economically to stay as part of not just the UK but the European Union as well.

DM: Last question about gay marriage and the fact that many government departments flew the rainbow flag yesterday to mark, well a momentous moment in parts of the UK but there wasn’t one flying over the Welsh Office, what do you think about that?  Do you think that they should have done?

CARWYN JONES: Well that’s a matter for the Welsh Office in London, for the Secretary of State for Wales.  We flew a flag over the Welsh Government buildings in Cardiff, you’ll have to ask David Jones, the Secretary of State, why he didn’t do the same.  

DM: But you’d like him to have done so?   

CARWYN JONES: Yes, I think it’s a landmark day, I think it’s important – as Ed Miliband put it yesterday here, people should be able to marry the person they love, I thought that was a fantastic way of explaining the importance of a change in the law.  We support it, you’ll have to ask the Welsh Office what their view was.  

DM: Okay, we’ll try to if we can.  Mr Jones, thank you very much indeed, very good to talk to you.  The Welsh First Minister there, Carwyn Jones, in Llandudno.