Preseli Pembrokeshire AM Paul Davies has hit out at the Hywel Dda Health Board and its predecessors for spending £1.3million on management consultants in the last three years.

Mr Davies is concerned that the NHS is paying private firms large sums of public cash for providing advice, money which would have been better spent on frontline patient services he said.

Figures obtained by the Welsh Conservative under the Freedom of Information Act show that NHS Wales has spent at least £18million on consultancy fees in the past decade.

In the past three years £1,327,000 was spent in the Hywel Dda health area, which includes Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire.

Mr Davies said: “This is a huge sum of money that would have been better spent on providing more doctors and nurses.

“People are unhappy with the out-of-hours GP service, these are frontline services crying out for more investment.”

Mr Davies added: “The new health boards cannot expect the health minister to keep writing debts off year after year.

“It is therefore vital that these new organisations keep on top of every pound that is spent and, more importantly, where it is spent.”

A Hywel Dda Health Board spokesman said: “Consultancy firms are only used to provide additional capacity for specific project work when these skills are not available within the substantial workforce.

“The added value and expertise they bring over a short period of time means the health board can avoid the much greater cost of employing extra management staff on a permanent basis.”