Audience in Haverfordwest pressed politicians on the NHS, tourism, education, AI and trust in politics

PEMBROKESHIRE was thrust into the heart of the Senedd election campaign on Wednesday night (Apr 8) when BBC Wales brought its Your Voice Live: Ask the Leader programme to Pembrokeshire College in Haverfordwest. Three party leaders — Darren Millar of the Welsh Conservatives, Jane Dodds of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru — each took the stage in turn to answer questions from a live studio audience.

The programme gave each leader just under half an hour to respond to whatever the audience wanted to ask, and the result was a lively, often sharp exchange focused on issues with particular relevance in Pembrokeshire and west Wales.

Healthcare under pressure

The strongest theme of the night was the state of the NHS.

Darren Millar was first to face the audience and was immediately challenged by Chloe Richards, an NHS nurse, who said the service was at breaking point and asked what his party would do in its first 100 days to fix it.

Millar said Wales was facing a genuine health crisis and argued that a Welsh Conservative government would declare a national health emergency and increase bed numbers in hospitals and community hospitals. He said ambulances were being delayed because patients could not be moved through the system quickly enough, and insisted that restoring capacity was the immediate priority.

But the answer did not go unchallenged. Richards told him that, while she agreed the NHS was in crisis, she did not feel he had explained how the staff shortages needed to support more beds would actually be solved.

That set the tone for much of the evening. Other audience members raised the lack of integration between health and social care, long ambulance waits, and the pressure on frontline staff. One woman described waiting four-and-a-half hours for an ambulance for her mother while fearing she may have suffered a stroke.

Millar replied that the biggest problem facing ambulance crews was the inability to hand patients over quickly outside busy hospitals, and repeated his claim that Wales needed urgent action rather than small-scale reform.

Tourism and the cost of living

The debate then moved on to jobs, tax and the cost of living, with clear local relevance for Pembrokeshire.

Millar set out a tax-cutting programme, including a proposed cut to the basic rate of income tax, a cap on large council tax rises and opposition to future fuel duty increases. He said the money would come from cutting waste, reducing bureaucracy and scrapping what he described as unnecessary Welsh Government spending.

Tourism quickly became part of the conversation. Lavinia Bourne challenged him to say more about how communities dependent on tourism and farming would be supported. Another audience member cited a sharp fall in furnished holiday lets in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire and asked directly whether the Conservatives would abolish the tourism tax.

Millar said they would. He argued that tourists were being unfairly blamed for wider housing problems and said overnight visitors were vital to local pubs, shops, restaurants and the wider rural economy. He made clear that he saw tourism as a positive force for Wales and not something to be punished.

Trust, accountability and Reform

The mood of the audience grew tougher as the discussion turned to trust in politics.

Martin Jones asked why communities should believe yet more promises before an election when earlier promises of investment had failed to materialise. Presenter Nick Servini also challenged Millar’s attempt to portray the Conservatives as outsiders in Welsh politics, pointing to the party’s long record in government at Westminster.

Millar responded that Wales had been held back by decades of Labour rule in Cardiff Bay, backed at times by Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats, and argued that devolved powers were strong enough to deliver real change if used properly.

Reform UK also hung over the exchange. Asked why right-leaning voters should back the Conservatives rather than Reform, Millar said there was only one Conservative party on the ballot paper and attacked Reform over standards and credibility.

His final questions focused on younger voters. When first-time voter Joshua Robson asked what his number one priority for Wales would be, Millar said it was fixing the NHS first, then getting Wales back to work and improving the economy. Robson then pointed out that young people rarely spoke positively about the Conservatives, leaving Millar to end with a direct appeal for younger voters to join his party.

Jane Dodds puts social care at the centre

Jane Dodds began with a question from Gillian Davis, who raised the intense pressure on GP surgeries and asked what could be done about closures, shortages and poor access.

Dodds said GPs were on the frontline of healthcare and needed more support, more funding and more incentives to stay in local communities. But it was clear from the outset that her central argument was about social care.

She said social care was the key to easing pressure across the entire health system. In her view, too many people were ending up in hospital unnecessarily, while too many others were stuck in beds because there was no care package in place to get them safely home.

That point was reinforced by a retired NHS worker in the audience, who said too many people were being admitted to hospital when they did not need to be there, and too many others were staying in acute beds long after they should have gone back into the community.

Dodds said there were 1,400 people in Welsh hospitals who should not have been there that evening, but who were unable to leave because they were waiting for assessments or carers. She argued that properly funded social care would ease pressure at both the front and back doors of hospitals, reduce delays for ambulances and help tackle corridor care.

Pressure on GP surgeries

The discussion around primary care then took on a strongly local and practical edge.

Davis, who works in a GP surgery, said a team of about six receptionists had dealt with around 2,500 calls in one day after the bank holiday. She said that patients trying to get a telephone appointment with one GP partner were already being told to wait until June, with face-to-face appointments taking even longer.

It was one of the clearest illustrations of the strain facing frontline services and reflected what many in Pembrokeshire will recognise from their own experience of trying to access local healthcare.

Dodds accepted that social care alone would not solve the pressure on GP practices. She said more money had to go directly into front-line services, more GPs had to be trained and rural communities needed stronger incentives to attract doctors. She also acknowledged the abuse that some reception staff face from frustrated patients and said it was unacceptable.

Would voters accept a tax rise?

One of the most politically risky moments of the evening came when Dodds was pressed on how she would pay for her plans.

She accepted that the Welsh Liberal Democrats could be the only party in the election arguing openly for a tax rise. She said that if the Welsh budget did not provide enough money for social care, her party would support a temporary increase of one penny on income tax, ring-fenced specifically for that purpose.

Dodds defended that position by saying it was dishonest for parties to promise tax cuts while also claiming they could protect public services. It was one of the clearest dividing lines of the night, and it set her apart from Millar’s tax-cutting pitch.

AI, social media and schools

Dodds was then asked how Wales should prepare young people for a future shaped increasingly by artificial intelligence.

She took a generally optimistic view, saying Wales should not fear AI but should get ahead of the changes it will bring. She said the country should consider creating a centre of excellence on AI, with training and courses to help young people prepare for the jobs of the future.

But audience member Janetta Warden was clearly uneasy. She said she worried AI could become an extension of the damaging aspects of social media and that children were already relying too heavily on technology to do their thinking for them.

That led into a wider exchange about education. A school governor from Pembroke said he was less concerned about AI than about the basic standard of education in Wales, arguing that schools should be aiming for the top rather than falling behind.

Dodds agreed that education was fundamental to Wales’ future. She linked good schools to stronger communities, better jobs and the hope that more young people would be able to stay in Wales rather than feeling they had to leave.

Plaid Cymru challenged on local healthcare

Rhun ap Iorwerth’s appearance began with a question that could hardly have been more relevant to west Wales.

Gemma Davies asked about the long distances many patients have to travel for hospital care and what could be done for those who do not drive. Ap Iorwerth said the issue involved transport, local standards of care and the need to rebuild confidence in services closer to home.

He said Plaid Cymru wanted to reduce waiting times now while also building a more sustainable health service for the future, with stronger primary care through GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists helping people earlier before hospital treatment became necessary.

Withybush concerns raised

Davies then made the question far more personal and local.

Pregnant with her first child, she said she could choose to give birth in the midwife-led unit at Withybush Hospital, but that doing so brought real anxiety because the unit was not consultant-led and because of concern about what would happen if complications arose and urgent transfer was needed.

It was one of the most powerful moments of the programme because it went straight to a concern that has echoed around Pembrokeshire for years: whether local people can still feel fully confident in the care available close to home.

Ap Iorwerth responded sympathetically and accepted the importance of maintaining confidence in local health provision, while also recognising that some specialist services would always have to be provided elsewhere.

Confidence, jobs and a national partnership

As his section continued, ap Iorwerth touched on a wider range of Plaid Cymru priorities, including health, waiting times, education standards, better jobs and childcare.

When he was asked to boil it all down to one central aim, he said that if he became First Minister he would want to look back in four years and say he had helped raise confidence in what Wales could achieve together.

He said he did not believe in a government that imposed things on people, but in one that worked in partnership with them. Asked whether a Plaid Cymru-led government would serve only Plaid voters, he replied that it would govern for all of Wales, regardless of how people voted.

Audience keeps the pressure on

If the three leaders were the stars of the broadcast, the Pembrokeshire audience was the driving force.

This was not a tame or passive crowd. Questioners repeatedly challenged vague answers, rejected political slogans and dragged the discussion back to the realities of life in west Wales. Healthcare dominated, but the questions also ranged across tourism, rural economies, housing, trust in politics, education and the future facing younger generations.

Several of the strongest moments came not from the politicians but from audience members describing real experiences: an NHS nurse frustrated by broad promises, a woman left waiting hours for an ambulance, a GP surgery worker overwhelmed by thousands of calls, and an expectant mother worried about the risks of maternity care far from specialist support.

For Pembrokeshire viewers, that local dimension was what made the programme stand out. National party leaders were not debating in the abstract. They were being asked to respond directly to problems people here know well.

Second programme next week

The Haverfordwest debate was the first of two BBC Wales specials ahead of the Senedd election.

The second programme, featuring Welsh Labour, Reform UK and the Wales Green Party, will be broadcast from Llandudno at 8:00pm on Wednesday, April 15.

BBC Wales’ visit to Pembrokeshire College turned Haverfordwest into a stage for one of the key election debates of the campaign. Darren Millar made the NHS his central theme, promising a declared health emergency, more hospital beds and a strongly pro-tourism, tax-cutting agenda. Jane Dodds put social care at the centre of her argument, openly defending the possibility of a temporary tax rise to fund it and calling for more support for GPs, schools and communities preparing for technological change. Rhun ap Iorwerth was pressed hardest on local healthcare and distance from services, with Withybush Hospital emerging as a powerful local concern, before setting out a broader message about confidence, partnership and national ambition. Through it all, the audience ensured the debate stayed rooted in Pembrokeshire realities rather than party scripts.

The programme is available to view on Iplayer.