Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 23 November 2021.

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Photo of Darren Millar Darren Millar Conservative 1:45, 23 November 2021

I'm surprised by your answer, First Minister. I didn't ask you what lessons the health board had learned, I asked you what lessons you had learned—the Welsh Government had learned. You were the health Minister at the time that these problems were festering in north Wales. Alarm bells were ringing, staff were complaining, patients were being neglected, some were being harmed, and I, along with other elected representatives who were Members of the Senedd at that time, were expressing concerns in correspondence to you. But it took you two years—two very long years—and a further damning report into institutional abuse and neglect in mental health services, this time at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd's Tawel Fan ward, before you finally got around to placing the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board into special measures. But of course it was too little, too late for those patients who in the meantime had come to harm and for their loved ones. Do you, as the health Minister at that particular time, accept any responsibility whatsoever for the harm that was suffered by patients? And what action is now being taken to hold those people who were responsible for the failings identified by Holden to account for what went wrong?