17/02/2013 The Wales Report

We look at plans to change the law Welcome to the The Wales Report.

Good evening and welcome to the programme that looks at the issues

that matter. There are currently more than 200 people waiting for an

organ transplant. Only 30% of us are registered as organ donors. The

Welsh Government says it has the answer by creating the first opt-

out system in the UK. If it is approved it means everyone will be

seen as a willing donor when they die unless they have stated

Medicine has at man dramatically. Auden donations made headlines

India's previous. Since those days, surgery has been increasingly

sophisticated and successful, yet today in Wales patients are dying

at the rate of one a week at because there are not enough organs

for operations. It was six years before Melanie was able to have her

kidney transplant. She considers herself lucky and is convinced

changing the law will increase donor numbers and stop others

having to go through the agony of The opt-out system will raise

numbers on the organ Donor Register. The a at the moment, we have to opt

into the system to become organ donors.

We have to make our wishes clear by signing up to the organ Donor

Register, carrying a card or telling family and friends about

our wishes. Under the new law, they will be a presumption we all want

to be organ donors unless we opt out of the system.

The if the plans are approved this year, the law will come into effect

in 2015. The moral debate is already under way, and aside from

the ethical discussion, some in the medical profession have deep

concerns about how it will work in practice. They say the plans have

not been thought through and insufficient funding need lead to

chaos. One academic says the whole policy is based on misleading

information. In explaining the new plans, the

Welsh Government has stated that Spain's use of the soft opt-out

system has driven up organ donor levels, but some claim that

presumed consent is not the reason for Spain's success.

To pass a bill with such a misleading statement is an

incredible thing to do. Do To do what the Spanish are doing

with public relations and so on. There are extra organs available

for transplant. But there will be more strain on facilities. Some are

worried we will not have enough intensive care beds to cope. There

has not been any increased capacity to take into account the

legislation. We feel if we could increase capacity we could

potentially increase the use of. would have profound implications

for our nurses. At the moment there are only 15 specialist donor nurses

in Wales. They are trained to have that delicate conversation.

requires a specialist skill said. Of course we will meet nursing and

medical staff. We do have bona specialists but only a small number.

Implementing the changes will cause -- cost an estimated �5 million

over the next five years. There will need to be extra intensive

care facilities as well as extra training for staff and setting up a

register. As well as that there will be a comprehensive public

awareness campaign. The Welsh Government told us they are

confident with the planned changes. They are already looking at

training resources. They are not seeking to copy any particular

country but will put in place a system that is right for Wales.

changes your life completely. It has given my husband back his wife,

my parents back their daughter. I am now a wife, sister, and tea,

daughter, not a patient. -- and. Joining me now is the cheer of the

assembly's health committee. He is this really going to make a

difference? Every single witness who comes in front of us says we

want to make sure the system increases the number of donors, the

number of organs available for donation. What you will also here

is a lot of concern from clinicians at the sharp end who say we do not

have the capacity for this. That would be true whatever course you

took to increased ownership. It is equally possible to argue that the

issue is not intrinsic to the bill. If you raised the number of donors

in any other way you would still have the same issue. You cannot do

this unless you increase resources. Everybody knows that up and down

the land it is difficult to find a bed under the existing system.

ambition for the Bill is that it would lead to 15 new donors have

been Wales in every calendar year. That has won every six months. Is

it likely to tip the system into a manageability? We are very generous

people on the hall. Voluntary donations and Wales at the second

highest in Europe, that begs the question why do we need to do this?

That is a debate that has been raised with us, would there be an

easier way to lead to more organ donors? You will also know that

because of a lot of these specialist procedures they will

have to happen over the border. Heart transplants take place in

Birmingham and so on. The whole thing needs to be joined up. There

is not a simple geographic border with something as specialist as

organ donation. Some of the practical issues about when they

are debated and Wendy are used are important. There are financial

implications in that. -- when they are used. The questions that are

being booked and challenged in that report, insufficient funding, has

not been clearly thought through, we are ploughing our own furrow

when we should not be, we have to be joined up. We do have to be

joined up. I do not think we have heard evidence that suggests the

financial implications have not been thought through. It has been

confirmed what the Government said to us that if we invest more in

organ donation we will save money we are currently spending on a very

unsatisfactory quality of life for people, kidney dialysis for example.

That money will be released back into the donor service. There are

people out with placards campaigning every week to keep

their health services opened yet you want to introduce a whole new

service on top of that. The flaw in the question is that it assumes the

money that is being spent on donation is not being spent already.

People who will be fitter from the extra donations are people who are

being treated now in the NHS. you very much indeed. Most of us at

the moment are looking very suspiciously at what is on our

plate. The horsemeat scandal has been dogging us for weeks and there

are still products disappearing from our shelves over this weekend.

Now worries about the meat that is supplied to schools across the

country. What can be done to restore faith in the food we eat

and what can be done with one of her most important industries,

farming. I am joined by an The AM who is also a farmer. It was

suggested that ministers were warned about this scandal with

course make being in the food chain 18 months ago. Consumer confidence

is so important. There are stories coming out from all sorts of angles.

It is important that ministers focus on the job in hand, making

sure confidence is restored in the processing sector. What is

important is that ministers do the job properly. If it is true they

were warned 18 months ago that there was horsemeat in the food

chain why on Earth did they not take action then? The key point is,

if it were true. What I am interested in and concerned about

is that we focus all our energies on cleaning up the act of the

processors. This is not about journalism or the media but about

public confidence in the food chain. That has been very badly shaken.

The Government has a role to play, has it not? We need to restore

confidence. From the primary sector of the farming side, we are

regulated, we have the checks in place. People can have complete

confidence. What we have found is because of the difference in the

price of meat and horsemeat people have been fraudulently adding

horsemeat to beef. People have to be brought to book on this and I

hope they are charged with the full Fraudulent activity has happened,

we have to make sure that is pushed out of the sector. We have good

bring back the confidence the consumer has in the food industry.

What is the Welsh Government doing? The Welsh Government needs to work

collaboratively with Whitehall, because there are two spheres of

influence, animal welfare legislation and consumer of

legislation. But the consumer does not want to hear bickering, they

want to hear it has been cleaned up and they can produce a product with

complete confidence. Can you honestly say at the moment that

they can do that? Yes, if they are just a product that has been

produced at home, has the former steward label on it, they can put

us that with confidence. -- has the a steward label on it.

Thank you very much indeed. G and on next week's programme, we

will have a special investigation into our food, tracking it from the

farm to your plate. Poverty in Wales and the gap

between the haves and there have nots in society is widening. Is it

really a fact of life that can never be changed gimlet after

benefiting from countless European and Government schemes, some parts

of Wales still seemed to be pop -- stat in a poverty trap. Our

correspondent is investigating the many local schemes to combat

deprivation. Several years since his last visit and millions of

pounds of investment later, David has returned to one area to find

that while initiatives have changed the level of poverty seemingly has

An invisible pall of poverty hangs over places like this estate. Set

in beautiful countryside just outside Merthyr Tydfil, it remains

socially isolated and invariably singled out as the epicentre of

multiple deprivation in Wales and all that goes with it.

Statistically, this is a pretty ugly place, relegated to the wrong

end of every table used to measure everything from unemployment to

education, to health, to crime, and It fills me with sadness to have

become back to this place and say the same things over, and over

again. But, despite the efforts of remarkable individuals, despite the

investment of millions of Pounds in worthwhile projects, and despite

the promise of politicians of all colours, the same stench of poverty

purveyed this place. -- pervades this place.

It is a malignancy that threatens to side and we consume its host.

Some have even suggested we should give up on this estate.

-- threatened to silently consumed. More Martin O'Neill, who was

brought up you, does not think so. He is the chair of a community

project, a beacon of hope in an island of despair.

The problems people face here are sometimes too subtle to quantify,

but those who live here at know what is missing, including

essentials like a health centre. They had won, but then they took it

away. -- they had a health centre. He the building was quite old and

money needed to be spent on upgrading the infrastructure to

make it fit for purpose. There is no health centre now?

Not on the estate, no. In one of the sickest communities

in the UK? Are on top of that there has been a

planned new health centre of built in the centre of Merthyr Tydfil,

but the problem is getting there. The Community Group has helped to

transform this place and transformed the heart of the

community. It was once known as a route. Now the graffiti spells out

something different, a belief in some kind of future. For many, it

is a future dependent on benefits. If you have to move into employment,

if you have to move to to education, sometimes you need some support. If

you were sick, you need support. Benefits have been a way of life

here for as long as I can remember. Benefits - what does that would

mean? Who has benefited from living in a place like this? -- what does

that would mean. Every time I have come here over the last 30 years,

it is to report people suffering, people struggling and people trying

definitely -- desperately to overcome problems that threaten to

overwhelm them. The lucky ones escape, most don't. Instead they

struggle with the consequences. Statistics are an impersonal

measure of what is happening here, that they are stuck. One in

particular hit me forcibly - in the last ten years, the number of

people who have never worked on this estate has almost doubled to

over 500 people. The you are familiar with these,

employment rates in Merthyr Tydfil below 60%. This is the second

lowest are amongst 12 -- 22 Welsh local authorities. Then on it goes

- health, crime, the same old stories. Nothing much has moved,

has it? No, it is not moving, but those numbers have to be

appreciated in the face of a global economic recession. Without that

investment, where would the fakers be? Back in the 1920s, they talked

about abandoning the police. Is that really an option, or should we

think about how to address the issues we are facing and not

abandoned the community? There have been schemes which have tried to

introduce some practical solutions come and give some hope to this

place. Schemes like a cooking project,

I remember this. This was a busy place.

Diane succeeded in injecting more than just cooking skills into this

project. The ones we had done a week or two

of Coke -- of cooking, we thought, why don't we do IT next? Why don't

we do English? Somebody wants to do child development. The cooking

classes opened up a new way of life for many single young mothers, who

freely admitted that they had never learned to cook and usually fed

their children with takeaways and chips. Lots of chips.

Chips, chips, chips. It is much easier doing a healthy salad than

ordering out takeaways continuously. The cooking project, which I filmed

six years ago, has long gone. Its effectiveness in transforming the

lives of a handful of individuals, however, has not been forgotten.

But the transient nature of such schemes, vital in areas of

deprivation, is both regrettable and hurtful.

It is no good stopping projects and letting people down, because we are

probably doing more damage than good. If somebody is engaging with

you and trusting in you, to then send them away and saying we cannot

do anything more with you, I think There is still investment going on

in this place, including extensive refurbishment work on the

infrastructure of the social housing. Long overdue. There is the

prospect of another �1.5 million worth of investment in community

schemes over the next two years. But it was hoped there would be

more than double that amount available. And, to compound the

financial problems, many areas here have found they no longer Pok --

qualified for communities first funding, provided by the Welsh

Government. Just when there appeared to be a

glimmer of hope and the estate was looking a lot better, at least

cosmetically, it was dealt another blow. Well, in fact, a double

whammy in the shape of the global financial crisis and the

Westminster Government's welfare reforms. A combination which

threatens to combine, to destabilise the social structure of

this place and undo so much of the good that has been done to try and

improve the lives of the people here.

David Williams there. Training now is the Children's Commissioner for

Wales, who is particularly concerned about how we are tackling

child poverty. It is a depressing story that,

isn't it? Do we just have to accept that children born into that kind

of poverty are going to have to look forward to a life of poverty

GMac I do not think we should accept it at all, some of the

things that came through it in the film is that people are working

really hard to mitigate the effects of poverty on children living in

disadvantaged families. The Welsh Government has signed up

to the UN Convention on the rights of the child. The only Government

across the UK, or the world, do have legislated in favour of the

Convention. That places a responsibility on Welsh Government

to think about the ways we can ensure all young people, regardless

of their circumstances, can get access to education and decent food.

A but we keep setting targets. The Welsh Government has set the target

of eradicating child poverty by 2020, is and that on realistic?

It is completely unrealistic now to think we will never hold on to the

target for 2020. Children's lives are at risk because of this, I

spend a lot of time talking to children talking to them about what

is important to them, and things like a decent education and good

food to eat or important to them. Are we also guilty of giving people

hope, an idea, an ambition? Absolutely, I think education is

all about making sure every child can fulfil their individual

potential. One of the most depressing lines about that film

was that back in the 1920s people were talking about giving up on

Merthyr Tydfil, and some people are talking about that today.

Some people are, but I would say, come with me there, some of the

best time of my life has been on the estate.

Of course, the effects of poverty are not only measured by levels of

employment and the food we feed our children. Hard times call for belt-

tightening across all aspects of life, including leisure time. With

less money available for cinema trips and local libraries are under

threat, Welsh Opera John Gower has been on a trip to the riverfront

theatre of and arts centre in Newport to voice his concerns that

will children are falling into cultural poverty. -- Welsh author

You can get a pretty good sense of how old a person is by asking them

which was the first James Bond movie they ever saw. In my case, it

was Dr no, which I saw in the classic fleapit cinema of the

Palace Theatre in Llanelli. Since then, there have been periods in my

life when you could describe be as a semi-professional movie Gore,

racking up to four or five films a day. Some children in Wales have

never been to the cinema because of poverty. No blockbusters, no All

Disney, no popcorn, sometimes because there is no cinema nearby,

or simply because ticket prices are prohibitive. Because in Wales up to

a quarter of children live within child poverty.

When we are talking about child poverty, we're not just talking

about education and nutrition, although cultural experience can be

a sort of nutrition. I would go as far as to see it is food for the

soul, but it is also educational, Imagination and creativity have

enormous value in the real world. The Confederation of British

Industry reckons that in 2013 there will be no fewer than 1.3 million

jobs in the creative industries. But you are not going to get on in

pretty much any industry if you cannot read and write, and

illiteracy, which shut people out of learning, is a new plate on our

communities. It is like locking the door on the world of books and

throwing away the key. -- is a new light. I am not sure where things

started to go wrong. When I grew up, learning was held

in very high regard in Wales and we were exporting teachers as much as

coal and steel. Now, Ilott to wreak -- illiteracy is a new scourge, and

stories from Hans Christian Andersen to Charles Dickens are

being locked away from our children. Horizon's contract and there as a

poverty of ambition, too. -- horizons contract.

It could not be impossible to show some of the world's great films or

include some of the finest stories between the covers of a book in the

classroom, should it? I try and imagine my own life without such

things, and it is a poverty beyond imagining.

Well, the Children's Commissioner for Wales is still with me. Is he

right? For I think he is absolutely right about cultural poverty, and

he is absolutely right about children and young people not

getting access to those things. I did a fantastic piece of work

this year with kids in museums, where museums were looking at

developing a new relationship between themselves and children.

What we saw from that was the rich breadth of experience that children

and families got from it, and understanding of their cultural

history and their contribution as artists, creators and writers.

But we have to get them literate, first of all, and there are

worrying reports. In Merthyr Tydfil, they are expecting a report to, it

with 40% illiteracy by the age of 11. That is not good, is it?

Yes, and there was an interested -- interesting piece of work in 2011

looking at a disadvantage areas, and they welcomed those schools

making that extra mile making sure children were exposed to trips to

art galleries, theatres, cinemas, making sure children are exposed to

the arts. Because if we can inspire young minds it gives us hope for

the future? Absolutely. If the arts is the thing that locks the key --

unlocked sticky, fantastic. That is it for this programme, I

will be back on Wednesday night investigating how a con man

claiming to help war veterans was able to get his hands on a large