Our north Wales Betsi Cadwaladr university health board is in special measures and overspent because Labour Welsh Government dismissed our warnings over many years. On each occasion, Labour Ministers dodged responsibility by instead accusing us of talking down our NHS when we were speaking up because staff, patients and families had asked us to do so. The board was only put into special measures in 2015 after an external investigation revealed that patients had suffered institutional abuse in Glan Clwyd Hospital's Ablett acute mental health unit. The then health Minister finally admitted that this decision reflected, quote:

'serious and outstanding concerns about the leadership, governance and progress in the health board over some time.'

The health board stated that it was alerted to serious concerns regarding patient care on the Tawel Fan ward in the Ablett unit in December 2013, but concerns about this ward went back a lot further. For example, in 2009, I represented a constituent who said that the treatment received by her husband there nearly killed him, that three other patients admitted around the same time as her husband had similar experiences, and she was now worried about the treatment others may receive in this unit.

Of course, there have been some positives since special measures. Further to my intervention on behalf of the neurotherapy centre in Flintshire, where health board funding had fallen to just £65 per person compared to £500 from commissioners in West Cheshire, the health board chief executive confirmed a framework on going forward.

When I visited fantastic staff at Wrexham Maelor Hospital this summer with the Hepatitis C Trust, they told me that there were now comprehensive treatment options. They added however that to do what the Welsh Government required would need between six and nine extra hepatology specialist nurses across the health board. We have seen patients waiting months for pain management treatment.

Only this afternoon, the health board announced yet another GP surgery closure. Although special measures saw some move from risk-averse complaints handling to problem solving via direct engagement with complainants, progress has stalled. Typical of this was a recent response to a complaint regarding a patient who died whilst receiving treatment from the health board. Although it apologised and stated that the complaint had been investigated in accordance with regulations, it coldly concluded that there was, quote,

'no qualifying liability on this occasion'.

The bereaved family were deeply distressed and told me that the response included several factual errors.

Betsi Cadwaladr is the only health board in Wales that does not commission services from the Bobath children’s therapy centre, which provides specialist physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and speech and language therapy to children all over Wales who have cerebral palsy. The cost to the remainder is negligible and the savings massive. Together with the centre, and a north Wales parent whose daughter had received its support, I met the health board twice to seek a way forward. They produced a draft report and copied it to us for comment. We each responded on the clear understanding that wider family engagement would only follow after our comments had been incorporated into the draft report. Instead, the unamended draft report was issued to parents with a questionnaire, unfairly biased towards internal provision of services, rather than the provision available from Bobath at a standard beyond which the health board can deliver.

Denied autism assessment, the parents of several daughters have told me that statutory bodies don’t understand that thinking has changed, and that autism presents differently in girls. Although forced to pay for private autism assessment, a 2017 letter from the health board said that Flintshire CAMHS had raised concerns about the rigour and conclusions in a number of private assessments, and in some cases didn’t accept the diagnosis, and that there was a requirement for these to be in line with NICE guidance. However, when I referred this to the clinical psychologist who had carried out these assessments, she confirmed that not only were she and her team NICE compliant, but also that she was a contributor to NICE guidelines.  

This approach helps explain why this health board has registered the highest number of serious patient safety breaches in Welsh hospitals, why it has the worst record for patients waiting longer than four hours in accident and emergency, and, with Wales having double England's level of patients waiting for treatment, why the number of Betsi Cadwaladr patients waiting over a year for routine surgery rose, as we heard earlier, 2,550 per cent, from 94 at the time when special measures were implemented to 2,491 in September 2017. This can't go on.