Murnaghan Interview with Leanne Wood, Plaid Cymru Leader, 6.03.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the leader of Plaid Cymru has said that Labour voters who feel taken for granted in Wales should switch to her party in May’s elections.  After falling into third place behind the Conservatives in 2011, the party is hoping to make a comeback.  Well I am joined now by the Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood and she’s in the Rhondda, a very good morning to you Ms Wood.  Well those words seem pretty familiar about the Labour party taking voters for granted, we recognise those from the SNPs campaigns in Scotland but they don’t seem to be having as much resonance for you in Wales.  

LEANNE WOOD: Well we’ve had 17 years of a Labour led government here in Wales, in fact since the beginning of devolution Labour have run our Assembly and the outcomes as a result of that government are not great.  If you look at our health service, our economy is pretty stagnant, our education system, our children could be doing much better in terms of when they leave school, illiteracy rates are too high, our PISA results performance is not good and so on, I could go on.  So 17 years of Labour rule here in Wales hasn’t done us much good and it’s now time for a change but one of the things I pointed out in my conference speech was the danger of allowing the Tories to have any opportunity to rule in Wales because while the Labour party have run down our health service, the Tories would sell us off and I very much want the Assembly election in May to be all about the health service.  We need to have a referendum on our health service here in Wales because the outcomes are so poor.

DM: Okay, I’ve got some specific questions on the health service in a moment or two but just in terms of who you are up against, you’ve got the Conservatives in front of you at the moment and UKIP breathing down your neck, do you think they are going to get even more prominence as the EU referendum campaign takes place in parallel?

LEANNE WOOD: Well the difficulty for us is to fight an election in the context of all of the media outlets seemingly obsessed about the EU referendum and the Tories infighting about that.  The leader of the Conservatives here in Wales interestingly has come out in favour of the leave position and that would put in jeopardy so many farmers who are getting subsidies from the EU at the moment which allow them to continue in that industry, so he is putting those industries at risk with his position so it gives us an opportunity to speak to those people in those rural constituencies.  On the one hand we can talk to people in places like here in the Rhondda where they are mainly working class people with concerns about services and the provision and the loss of services and so on, but we can also now speak to those people in more rural constituencies who will be badly affected if the Conservative leader has his way and we are pulled out of the EU.

DM: Well now I’m confused Ms Wood because you were a signatory to that letter weren’t you, Nicola Sturgeon and others signed it, that letter to the Prime Minister before the referendum campaign began and before the date was set, saying delay it, it will overshadow the May elections yet here you are telling me it gives you an opportunity to talk to people.

LEANNE WOOD: Well I am going to take every opportunity that I can get but the danger for us is that the debate that we need to have about the future of our health service, the necessity to keep it in public hands, to make sure that it provides for all people in all places, that that will be overshadowed by the EU debate.  Remember, the majority of people here in Wales receive their news and information from UK sources and if all those UK sources, the main topic of conversation is the EU referendum then the real danger is that we won’t have the debate that we need to have and our election won’t be the referendum on the NHS and we really do deserve to have that open debate here now.

DM: And so we’re chasing each other round here, so UKIP do get a boost?

LEANNE WOOD: Well the danger is that if everybody is just talking about the two issues, and remember they do seem to only have two policies, coming out of the EU and immigration, those two issues are dominating the news agenda then the likelihood is that there will be some impact for them from that.  The problem for them though is that in Wales they are in the midst of serious infighting, they’ve managed to get people from failed Tories from England to come in and fight some of those seats, but the background noise of the EU referendum and the immigration debate and the problems at the EU level with the failure of states to come together and try to find a solution for the migration issue, it does stand them in good stead is the danger.

DM: Okay, well let’s get on to the health service, and you mentioned it several times about in your analysis that it’s in a pretty bad state in Wales and it is something the Prime Minister says as well but you will have been interested won’t you in that OECD report from just a few days ago saying that in actual fact the health service in Wales is no better or worse than that in England.  The way the cuts have been implanted are slightly different in that the Welsh have protected social care more than has happened in England.

LEANNE WOOD: If you are only comparing the health service in England and the health service in Wales then it is a pretty low bar I would say because the Tories in England have started the process of privatising the health service in England.  Billions of contracts have already been awarded so I would say that is not the way to compare services, what we need to do is look at outcomes and my team has been going around this country and speaking to people on the doorsteps and in town halls and what we’ve been told are that there are huge problems in the health service and it’s important to point out that that’s not because of the staff.  The staff in the health service are working under incredibly difficult conditions and many of their colleagues have been forced out of the service for example but it’s unacceptable that so many people have to wait so long for basic things like hip operations, mental health services, to have a diagnosis of cancer or the all clear and that’s why we’ve put together a package of proposals for a Well Wales which will address those problems, cut waiting times, invest in our workforce and most importantly of all, make sure that our older people are cared for.  Remember that promise, from the cradle to the grave?  We owe it to our older generation to make sure they are cared for in their older age.

DM: Okay, Leader, thank you very much indeed.  Leanne Wood there, the leader of Plaid Cymru.