Hustings Questions
Questions to ask Senedd candidates about Digital Health and Care Wales — hold them to account before they're elected.
Make Your Vote Count for NHS Digital
The 7 May 2026 Senedd election will elect 96 Members of the Senedd across 16 constituencies. Many candidates will be entirely new to Welsh politics. Getting them on record about DHCW accountability before they are elected creates leverage afterward. Once elected, politicians are far harder to pin down.
Hustings are public question-and-answer events held during the campaign period where candidates face voters directly. They are one of the most powerful tools available to ordinary citizens in a democracy — and they are your opportunity to make digital health in Wales an election issue.
The questions below are designed to be asked exactly as written. Each is self-contained, factual, and based on evidence published on this site. You do not need any specialist knowledge to ask them.
The Questions
1. Intervention and Accountability
"Digital Health and Care Wales has been under Level 3 Welsh Government intervention (Enhanced Monitoring) since March 2025, with all nine major programmes failing simultaneously. What will you do to ensure accountability for this unprecedented failure?"
Level 3 is the most serious intervention the Welsh Government can impose on an NHS Wales body. No other organisation has been escalated to this level across its entire programme portfolio. This is not a single project going wrong — it is systemic, organisation-wide failure.
2. Return on Investment
"The CEO of DHCW admitted in a public meeting that she cannot demonstrate what return the public has received on approaching £200 million in identifiable programme costs. Do you believe this is acceptable, and what accountability measures would you support?"
In January 2026, CEO Helen Thomas stated "We don't have an ROI on all of our investments." This was not an allegation made by critics — it was her own admission, in a public forum. Identifiable programme costs alone approach £200 million — with the true total substantially higher — and the only quantified return is £0.5 million in non-cash time savings.
3. Whistleblower Protection
"At least two senior DHCW employees have allegedly been dismissed after raising concerns that the Welsh Government later confirmed. Will you support the establishment of an independent Freedom to Speak Up Guardian for DHCW?"
The 2018 Public Accounts Committee found that DHCW's predecessor organisation was "the antithesis of open." Eight years later, the pattern appears unchanged. People who raise legitimate concerns about failures in a public body should be protected, not punished.
4. Patient Impact
"The Royal College of Physicians and RCGP Cymru Wales warned in 2025 that DHCW's digital failures were causing patients to 'regularly experience delays that lead to worsening health.' What will you do to ensure digital health services actually serve patients?"
This is not an abstract technology problem. Clinicians — the people who treat patients every day — have told the Welsh Government directly that digital failures are harming the people of Wales. This demands an answer from anyone seeking to represent those people.
5. Leadership Change
"England's NHS App has 39 million users. Wales's was described by the Deputy Chief Executive of NHS Wales as 'mired in delay.' England recruited its digital health leaders from Credit Suisse, Jaguar Land Rover, and the Home Office. Wales promoted from within. Do you support recruiting DHCW's executive team through open international competition to bring in leaders with proven delivery track records?"
Research from a meta-analysis of 13,578 CEO successions shows that outside leaders initiate significantly more strategic change than insiders. The NIHR's evaluation of NHS trusts in special measures found that "changes to senior leadership were a key driver for change." IBM, GDS, and NHS Digital were all transformed by leaders hired from outside. DHCW's CEO has spent over 30 years in NHS Wales administration. Not one member of the executive team's published biography demonstrates a track record of delivering complex technology at scale.
6. The EHR Decision
"Wales must decide within the next few years how every patient record in the country will work — for a generation. England has over 90% electronic patient record coverage. Northern Ireland deployed a unified system across all its trusts. Wales has no national EHR, no timeline for one, and the organisation responsible has failed at every programme it has attempted. Who should make this billion-pound decision — and should it be the current DHCW leadership?"
This is the most consequential technology decision in the history of NHS Wales. Get it right and Wales could own a world-class system that saves billions. Get it wrong — as the UK did with the £12.7 billion NPfIT disaster — and patients will be locked into failing systems for a generation. The people who make this decision must have proven EHR delivery experience. The current leadership does not.
7. Falling Behind England
"Wales's most advanced DHCW programme — electronic prescribing — is still not fully rolled out. England completed theirs over a decade ago. Why should the people of Wales accept digital health services that are a decade behind England?"
Electronic prescribing represents DHCW's best performance, not its worst. Most of its programmes are in significantly worse shape. If the best case is a decade behind England, the true picture of digital health in Wales is far more alarming.
How to Attend a Hustings
- Find events: Check local party websites and social media for event announcements. Local newspapers and community Facebook groups often advertise them too.
- Arrive early: Sign up for questions as soon as you arrive. Spaces to ask questions are limited and allocated on a first-come basis.
- Keep it concise: You will usually have 30 to 60 seconds to ask your question. The questions above are designed to be read aloud within that time.
- Record the response: Most hustings are public events and recording is permitted. A phone recording of a candidate's answer is valuable evidence of their position.
- Share the response: Send what you hear to the campaign at carenhs@carenhs.org so we can publish it.
Share What You Hear
Candidates' answers only matter if people see them. When you attend a hustings, send us what candidates said — whether it was a strong commitment, a vague deflection, or an outright refusal to engage. We will publish a tracker of candidates' positions so that voters across Wales can see who is willing to stand up for accountability in digital health, and who is not.
Every question asked is pressure applied. Every answer recorded is a commitment that can be held to account after the election.
Email your hustings reports to: carenhs@carenhs.org