Despite it only being his first outing as the leader of the opposition in the Senedd, new Tory leader Darren Millar wasted no time in blasting First Minister Eluned Morgan over her handling of the NHS in Wales.
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00:00I take this responsibility seriously, and I therefore look forward to having a constructive
00:08relationship with you, First Minister. I won't shy away from holding you and your government
00:13to account, but where it is possible, my party and I will work with you in the interests
00:19of the people of Wales and with other political parties in this chamber, because we are here
00:24elected to serve them, and that's why they will always be first in our minds.
00:31Can I first of all welcome Darren to his new role as the leader of the opposition, the
00:37Conservatives in Wales, and I've no doubt we will have some very robust, but constructive
00:45exchanges in the Senedd. I'm almost looking forward to it, Darren.
00:49And of course it didn't take them long to have one of those robust exchanges, as things
00:53got off to a fiery start between the pair, with plenty of finger-pointing, blaming and
00:58some scathing takes on the situation of the NHS in Wales. Darren Miller clearly wants
01:02to hit the ground running as leader of the opposition.
01:06Under Labour, Wales has become the sick man of Britain. We have Welsh NHS waiting lists
01:12that have increased for the past eight months in a row, and staggeringly, over 24,000 people
01:19in Wales have been waiting two years or more for treatment. It is an absolute scandal,
01:25and it is clear that the NHS in Wales, on your watch as a previous health minister,
01:31is broken. What are you going to do to fix it?
01:34I'll tell you what we're going to do. There's an increased amount of money that is coming
01:37in for the first time in a very long time. You heard me talk earlier about how difficult
01:42it was for us to make those cuts to things like the arts, and you talked about wanting
01:46to work constructively. You want to work constructively. Make sure that billion pound
01:51comes to Wales, because we need an extra vote here, and if we don't get it, you won't be
01:55getting that billion pound.