A curious campaign

There has been a fair bit of comment on blogs and elsewhere about the recent incident that saw trainee reporter Chad Welch removed from a joint Llanelli council meeting and his notes taken from him. As you would expect, there are conflicting accounts as to what actually happened before and during the meeting. However, this alleged instance of politicians snapping at the hand that writes about them has ended up being as much a comment on the calibre of local representation as it is on a denial of press freedom.

"So which one of you is town
and which is rural?"

A few weeks before the event, Llanelli Rural Council issued a media release stating that it would be lobbying local politicians "following Hywel Dda Community Health Council’s (CHC) decision to refer the health board’s review of its clinical services to the Welsh Government."

All well and good but some might ask how a very public statement of intent like this turns into a closed-doors meeting of elected representatives. What is even more curious is how this is an apparently acceptable arrangement when you consider that a few LRC members have a record of demanding greater openness in public life and especially health bodies. There is also the matter of a subsequent tweet by a local AM which implies a role of uninvolved bystander rather than participant - but that is for another time.

An accusation consistently levelled at Hywel Dda LHB is that background organisational decisions which drastically affect service levels have been made in secrecy. These have then been rubber stamped with attempts at validation through perfunctory and often hopelessly executed public consultation.

Unfortunately for local NHS users the political campaign of opposition is just as lacking in focus. The Community Health Council, which is supposed to have professional advisors at its disposal, somehow forgot that it does not have a constitutional power of veto and failed to come up with any alternative service arrangements for ministers to consider.

It may be an uncharitable assessment but the impression to be gained is that having the problem batted back at them unsettled one or two people who were expecting nothing more challenging than waving a few placards. Of course, it's more than possible that the newspaper, keen to boost flagging circulation with its own campaign, had a very similar approach in mind.

As things stand we may never know - and that's the problem.