Justice delayed is justice denied.

This phrase is usually used in the context of a court case or some kind of investigation, usually when someone has been accused of wrongdoing. But can it also apply to elsewhere?

As citizens and taxpayers in a developed country, if we do not receive timely healthcare and have to wait months, even years, for treatment, languishing in pain, is that just?

Readers will know how often health is a news story, particularly in Wales which seems to be much more ill than elsewhere in the United Kingdom due to its demographics – itself a consequence of public policy failure, not just an unhelpful coincidence – and that waiting times are a key indicator of how well the Welsh NHS is being run, as it has been by Labour for the last quarter of a century.

Well, the latest statistics show Wales just recorded the worst A&E waits, longest NHS treatment list, and second-slowest ambulance response times on record.

One-in-five people are on a waiting list in Wales. That means, on average, when you walk past four people, one of you is waiting for NHS treatment.

You may think that it’s probably just as bad elsewhere in the UK. And while it is a difficult situation nationally, it is awful in Wales.

And it is not getting better. One-in-four of those on a list are waiting over a year for treatment.

This has got worse over recent months. In England, it was never as bad and has progressively improved, with only one-in-20 waiting more than 12 months. Average waits are 10 weeks longer than in England, too.

A total of 64,000 people in Wales wait over two years for treatment – that’s the population of Wrexham.

Labour ministers in Cardiff Bay blame Covid. Considering the waiting list doubled in the year before the pandemic hit, I blame them.

And what about emergency care? How will you fare when you are bleeding, having a stroke, with broken bones, or something else that has plunged you into one of the most stressful and scariest days you’ll ever experience?

We take pride in our NHS staff, but we cannot – should not – be proud of how it is run when the patients that pay for it are left to suffer like this.

Welsh Conservatives have a plan. Labour’s is an unambitious sticking plaster that is totally inadequate to the challenge we face.

Labour need to get a grip on the NHS and stop breaking all the wrong records.