In your statement to us, you state,

'anyone who has taken the time to read the report carefully should appreciate the thoroughness of the investigation and understand how the conclusions have been reached.'

We have to disagree. But, of course, we're not alone. The chief officer in the north Wales community health council has said that dismissing the testimony of Tawel Fan families is akin to not believing survivors of sexual abuse. He insisted the evidence given by relatives of dementia patients at the Ablett unit was absolutely credible. The older person's commissioner for Wales, Sarah Rochira, said the headline findings of the report will be of little comfort to the families of the patients on the Tawel Fan ward, who had been clear that their relatives suffered standards of care that were quite simply unacceptable.

Was not your use of the word 'reassuring' in initial press reports following the publication of the report at the very best insensitive to the relatives and families, who themselves were reported as stating they found this report devastating? They were angry and in uproar over the abuse report. They again talked about how their loved ones were seen being dragged by the scruff of the neck, barricaded and left in their own mess. One spoke about how his mother was bullied and forced to sleep in an ant-infested bed. There was more than one occasion when she'd be in the same clothes for at least two days, lying in her own mess. He described the report as a huge cover-up, as reported in the press.

The Tawel Fan mental health board, in the Ablett unit report in 2013—in that report, the health board said it was alerted to serious concerns regarding patient care in December 2013. Of course, reports go back a lot, lot further. In 2009, I represented a constituent who alleged the treatment received by her husband in the unit nearly killed him and that three other patients admitted around the same time as her husband had similar experiences and that she was now worried about the treatment others may receive in this unit. Her husband suffered from Alzheimer's and terminal cancer. I was also copied in on a complaint in respect of another patient at the time who had vascular dementia, which included distressing before-and-after photographs. These were shared with both the health board and its predecessor and your predecessor. No action appears to have been taken. 

Thankfully, in 2015, Welsh Government, the health board and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales all accepted the findings of Donna Ockenden's 2015 report. So, why now, when many serious allegations are peppered throughout the HASCAS report, has it come to the bizarre conclusion that care was good and that institutional abuse didn't happen? Why do the conclusions not stack up with the findings? The HASCAS report doesn't chime with concerns raised in other reports. Why doesn't it chime with the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales report in July 2013, which found a patient locked in a room sitting in a bucket chair, incontinent in their own faeces and urine. It found no activities for patients. It found the garden unkempt and inaccessible. It found insufficient staffing, and much more—HIW, July 2013.

There was internal work on dementia care mapping in October 2013, which revealed that patients were desperately trying to engage with staff, and it reported an elderly patient found to be smearing herself with her own faeces resulting from that lack of engagement. The HASCAS report on page 115 talks about this dementia care mapping, but then on page 116 says no serious concerns were raised and no poor practice was observed. Why does that not agree with the October 2013 report, which found precisely the opposite? If this was your own grandmother, your mother or your sister, would you not consider this a serious concern? Any other rational human being would consider this to be a matter of the most utter and utmost seriousness.

Page 64 of the HASCAS report says that 29 families described significant concerns with communication and dementia diagnosis, and 18 families alleged unexplained bruising and injuries. This isn't an election; it's not a poll. It's not a question of how many people had one experience or another to decide on the outcome. These are the experiences reported by dozens and dozens of families regarding the people that mattered most to them. Page 66 says that 10 families described relatives as being dirty and the ward smelling of urine. Why is this not a breach of care to these patients and, by association, to their families?

The HASCAS findings are based, quite properly, on clinical notes. You refer to the clinical notes in your statement, but they acknowledge that they understand that when they came to start their review, the clinical records they needed had not been secured. Why therefore, in breach of standard NHS practice to stop clinical notes being got at, were these notes not secured? And how, even if they weren't got at, can we have any confidence regarding their content in these circumstances, especially given the different findings of different reports I've referred to previously? 

Is it not therefore the case that our colleague, Darren Millar, who can't be with us today, is right to have written to the Public Accounts Committee asking them to examine this matter, reflecting both the inconsistent evidence and the huge concerns caused to north Wales in general, but particularly to the families of these dozens of victims, I will call them, where the evidence is so strong that we have to accept that they were clearly telling the truth? I hope, Cabinet Secretary, you're going to change your tune on this, that you're going to listen, that you're not going to shoot the messenger, and that you're going to reconsider your approach, because, if not, you will have failed in your duty to these people, you will have failed in your duty to the patients and staff, and you will have failed in your duty to Wales. I look forward to your response.