Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:07 pm on 4 March 2020.
Diolch. I'm very pleased to hear from Angela again. I remember her being very persuasive in the Chamber before on this and I know the particular case she's had and the extraordinary work she's done as an AM to support that family. I was also quite struck by a recent tv documentary in the same area. Just looking at that facility, it was so much more prison-like than I had imagined. She says we should have a medium-secure unit in Wales—yes we should. I hope it will be better than what we've seen, at least of some of those units in England. But I don't think it will necessarily mean that it would treat every patient in Wales where we need this mental health in-patient treatment. I think there is a danger in going from specific concerns about cases we're aware of to general but highly prescriptive requirements that we see in this motion.
I just have some concern about saying, too, that no patient should be a long distance from their family. There may be some mental health conditions that are so specialised that there can only be one or two places in the UK where you can give treatment at sufficient scale with sufficient specialists to do it. It may be, in some cases, the right thing for a particular patient in Wales to attend there. I also think there's a potential contradiction between no patient being a large distance from their family and then repatriating all Welsh patients—not clear how defined—who are currently in units in England. Perhaps some of those may have family or support in England, and we have many people who live near the border, and have mobility to move from England to Wales. And there may be special cases for individual patients, and we have to consider those, too.
I think 3 (c) is too strong in terms of a ban on Welsh units using ones in England that have had a poor inspection. Perhaps they're dealing with that poor inspection, or perhaps that poor inspection was particular to one aspect of that facility. In 3 (c), the Plaid motion puts a lot of emphasis on the Care Quality Commission in England, yet then in (d) says that we should ignore that entirely and they must abide by Welsh inspection requirements. I think that's unrealistic in another context. We can't really have extra-territorial regulation. [Interruption.] Yes, I will.