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Plaid's Leanne Wood fails to reveal health policy cost | |
(about 4 hours later) | |
Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood has said she is unable to put a figure on the cost of her party's plans to integrate health and social care. | |
She told BBC Radio Wales they would be "absorbed with the overall reorganisation of local government". | |
Ms Wood told Good Morning Wales Plaid wanted to "turn around" the Welsh NHS compared to "more stagnation and decline" under Labour. | |
She was speaking as the Plaid Cymru conference opened in Aberystwyth. | |
Ms Wood said money coming to Wales due to extra spending on England's health service would be ring-fenced to go to the Welsh NHS if Plaid Cymru wins power in May 2016. | |
She said that, after 16 years of Labour rule, Wales had fewer doctors per head than elsewhere in Britain, growing waiting times for operations, and people struggling with care costs. | |
Plaid Cymru, she promised, would recruit an extra 1,000 doctors "so that services are safe". | Plaid Cymru, she promised, would recruit an extra 1,000 doctors "so that services are safe". |
The party's election pledges also include scrapping care fees for the elderly and people with dementia, at a cost of £226m. | |
However, she told BBC Radio Wales she was unable to put a figure on the overall cost of reorganising the health service by abolishing the health boards and integrating health with social care offered by local councils. | |
"We want to see health services run in a very different way," she said. | |
"I can't give you a figure for that ... there will be a cost but it has to be absorbed with the overall reorganisation of local government. | |
"It's not something you can look at specifically on its own." | |
'Strong team' | 'Strong team' |
On the party's prospects of coming to power, Ms Wood told BBC Wales: "I want to see a Plaid Cymru government. | |
"Now I accept that forming a majority is difficult, because of the system that we have, but a Plaid Cymru minority administration would have to work with other parties in order to gets its budget and its programme through." | |
Plaid entered government for the first time in coalition with Labour in Cardiff Bay between 2007 and 2011, under Ms Wood's predecessor Ieuan Wyn Jones. | Plaid entered government for the first time in coalition with Labour in Cardiff Bay between 2007 and 2011, under Ms Wood's predecessor Ieuan Wyn Jones. |
She said she could not rule out forming another coalition with Labour, but said it was "very difficult to see" how Plaid could form an administration with the Conservatives. | |
Ms Wood accused the Tories of being "intent on pursuing ideological cuts from Westminster" and "so far apart from us ideologically". | |
"The vast majority of people in Wales are not prepared to contemplate the Conservatives being in government in Wales," she added. | |
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is also speaking at the Plaid Cymru conference on Friday. | |
She will praise Leanne Wood as "principled, passionate" and ready to lead Wales. |