Now not the time for change from Labour, says Eluned Morgan as party trails in polls
PA MediaFirst Minister Eluned Morgan says "now is not the time for change" as her Labour party trails in the polls for Wales' Senedd election.
Morgan said that in a world of "global instability" voters should stick with the party that has run Wales' government since 1999.
Opinion polls suggest voters do not agree with her - with three recent surveys placing Labour in third behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK.
In an interview with BBC Wales the first minister also said a freeze on recruiting NHS staff in Wales, which has seen some students looking abroad for work, is because the health service is now better at retaining staff.
Morgan was asked on BBC Radio Wales Breakfast on Wednesday why her party was promising to make council tax fairer after the election but did not do while in government.
She said: "I think it's really important to recognise that actually people are under pressure at the moment and what we need is stability.
"We have massive instability and now is not the time for change."
Pressed on whether she understood why Labour was third in the polls, she said: "Incumbency is difficult and the longer you're in the more difficult it gets. That's a natural situation."
On NHS waiting lists, she suggested other parties would not know how to get them down.
"When you get new parties who don't know the system, don't know how to do it, there will be a halt to progress and I fear that's what's likely to happen if you get new governments," she said.
Morgan said there was "significant progress" in reducing waiting lists in Wales, but said they did not know if she would meet her own targets - with official figures due to be published on Thursday.
The Welsh government had promised to cut waiting lists by 200,000, eliminating waits of two years or more, and making sure nobody is waiting more than eight weeks for a diagnostic tests.
The number of people waiting for treatment did see a record drop in January, but the number of patients waiting longer than the target times for both diagnostics and therapies had risen.
Morgan also argued that the NHS recruitment freeze which has seen the Welsh government come under fire for in recent weeks had arisen from an improvement in how staff are retained in the health service.
"We have increased the numbers very significantly in the NHS. We had very high levels of agency workers in the NHS," she said.
"The fact is those have come tumbling down. We have much better retention rates, and that is the reason why we're in this situation.
"It's because, ironically, things have become better and clearly there is knock-on effect.
"I do understand why people in those situations be very frustrated. I'm very confident that when you've got 112,000 people working in the NHS, there is always staff turnover and there will be opportunities for these people in future."
