WHILE protestors outside the Senedd called for him to address them face-to-face, Welsh Health Minister Mark Drakeford hid behind a statement consisting of bland and complacent reassurance. The crowd called his name and cried “shame” as the former social policy academic remained inside the building. Accused of not listening to protestors and ignoring their concerns, further evidence of the Minister’s tangential grip on his brief emerged following the publication of a letter to Rebecca Evans AM for Mid and West Wales dated June 15. Rebecca Evans had drawn the Minister’s attention to Dr Martin Simmonds’ open letter to the Health Board, which slammed the Board’s plans for scrapping paediatric care at Withybush Hospital and replacing it with a lick and promise. The closing part of Professor Drakeford’s letter has caused some surprise among Withybush staff at the sharp end of the Board’s decision to slash services in Pembrokeshire. Staff have been told to relocate or else leave, with no prospect of redundancy pay if they refuse to uproot themselves and their family to work at Carmarthen. Putting it in terms that Mark Drakeford will perhaps understand, the Health Board will centralize key services at a location as remote from Pembrokeshire’s western Coast as Brecon is from his home in Pontcanna. In relation to Paediatric care, Dr Simmonds’ letter read in part [emphases added]: “I do not know of ANY paediatricians in Hywel Dda who have given their support to this service model. “Work undertaken by two senior nurses at Withybush has produced research indicating that the risk assessment for a PAU here indicates that it is neither SAFE nor resilient enough to serve the needs of the local population this remote from the hub Paediatric inpatient base.” Apparently, Mark Drakeford read Dr Simmonds’ words differently. He notes that “the Health Board will CONSIDER DELAYING implementation of the paediatric component of change to ensure the maintenance of safe services.” The response appears to indicate that, contrary to the Health Board’s repeated claims, the proposed changes are far from being “clinician-led” Note, please, the conditional expression. It is the same as that which accompanied the original conditional pledge to maintain paediatric services at Withybush in January 2013. Events have shown the true value of those words. The CHC were duped by the Board’s reassurance. If they had not been, events would have been very different. Stripped of the pretence of their changes being clinician-led, the Board’s plan to downgrade Withybush would have been laid bare for all to see. That observation rather gives the lie to another bland statement made by Mark Drakeford in his letter to Rebecca Evans: “I am advised that paediatricians support [the changes to neonatal or maternity services].” Quite how Mark Drakeford squares his assertion on the change to neonatal and maternity care with the outrage felt by clinicians at Withybush that their concerns were swept under the carpet by the Board; or worse, as Dr Simmonds suggests, the Board kept asking clinical staff questions and harassing them until it got the answers it wanted. “Please be assured that Dr Simmonds’ comments have been noted by myself and the Health Board. There is no intention to implement a service which is not supported by clinical advice or presents a material risk to patients’ health.” Quite how Mark Drakeford squares the content of his last sentence with the categorical content of Dr Simmonds’ letter is not made clear. Whether Mark Drakeford read Dr Simmonds letter or merely “noted” it, his reply to Rebecca Evans demonstrates that he has not understood it. If Mark Drakeford is unaware of the catastrophic effect on Pembrokeshire of what the Health Board is up to, it is because he and the Welsh Government are wilfully turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the obvious.