Health Minister Eluned Morgan and her press office are in a bad state of confusion. So much so that an impartial and kindly observer would be advising them to jack it all in and surrender their roles to artificial intelligence.

At least then we might know what’s going on in the matter of when, or even if, the sluggish Hywel Dda health board is going to be told to get its skates on and provide Bronglais Hospital with one of the new-concept clinics designed to fast-track the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

You know, life-saving stuff. As this column has pointed out, rapid diagnosis clinics (RDCs) offer swift examination of patients with nagging symptoms that might be cancer, providing an immediate likely diagnosis, an appointment with a specialist, a plan for more tests or reassurance if there isn’t a problem.

Launching the new streamlined system in October 2021, Eluned Morgan said the roll-out of the clinics must come with a guarantee of easy access no matter where you live.

As Frankly Speaking has revealed, in the Hywel Dda area that is conspicuously not the case, the only clinic being in southern Carmarthenshire, at Llanelli, a round trip of about 175 miles if you live in northernmost Ceredigion.

So what’s become of the government’s easy-access pledge? Morgan is a Mid and West Wales regional MS, so you might have thought she must have been feeling pretty awful about patients in the Bronglais catchment having to spend a day or more getting to Llanelli and back to take advantage of the new early-warning arrangement.

That she would have lost no time in instructing the historically Carmarthenshire-centric Hywel Dda board to do as it’s told and set up a rapid diagnosis clinic at Bronglais, and with the minimum of delay.

Yet that’s exactly what hasn’t happened. On the off-chance that Morgan hasn’t the foggiest idea what’s going on, I patiently pointed out to her PR people that Hywel Dda is refusing to commit to providing a clinic in Aberystwyth, so what was she going to do about her access instruction being ignored? Based on their reply, absolutely nothing.

With as much keen engagement as you’d get from a dodo, they provide merely a carbon-copy of an earlier message: “The location of RDCs is a matter for the health boards to decide depending on their populations.”

But then the crucial line: “We expect there to be equity of access across Wales.”

Two statements mutually contradictory; and attempts to extract elucidation or explanation are ignored.

Confusion at government level on something as important as RDCs shakes public confidence in a government which in other ways isn’t doing a bad job.

As for population as a criterion for NHS services provision, realistic strategic thinking long ago accepted that rurality is a far more important factor.

So how to break through this government-health board fog of indifference and illogicality?

I put Ceredigion MS Elin Jones in the picture, and she tells me she’ll ask the health board chief executive, Steve Moore, for “answers on when an RDC is planned for Aberystwyth in order to provide a fair geographic access to such diagnostic centres. It certainly isn’t good enough at the moment.

“If I don’t get any specific commitment from Hywel Dda, I’ll take up the matter with Eluned Morgan.”

You can’t help wondering how much Baroness Morgan of Ely - yes, I refer to the Labour health minister - knows about the problems faced by many of her Mid and West Wales constituents in accessing NHS services generally. How often does she do the rounds and check up? Whatever, Elin Jones should be able to track her down, because the baroness is currently on leave of absence from the House of Lords. So does she miss the comfort of the upper chamber’s red benches? If she does, perhaps she should stop denying herself that pleasure.