Questions now from party leaders and, on behalf of the Welsh Conservatives, Darren Millar. 

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, I know that you would like us to focus today's First Minister's question time on your party's deal with the Welsh nationalists, but I don't want to focus on what many people on my side of the Chamber regard as a sideshow. I want to focus on issues that really matter to the people of Wales. So, I want to ask you about mental health. First Minister, last week saw the publication of a report on mental health services in north Wales. It made for very difficult reading. The Holden report, which was suppressed by the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board for almost eight years, exposed a culture of bullying, intimidation, staff shortages, patient neglect, all at the Hergest unit in Ysbyty Gwynedd. Can you tell me, First Minister, what lessons has the Welsh Government learnt from that report?

Well, as the Member said, Llywydd, the report is eight years old, and many lessons have been learnt since then. I was myself heartened to see that the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales report on the Hergest unit in 2018 found evidence that the unit then provided safe care, and that when HIW undertook a quality check at the unit in May of this year, it once again confirmed that considerable progress had been made in bringing that unit to a more acceptable level of care and provision for citizens in that part of Wales. So, those are the lessons that have been learnt over that eight-year period—that, with a proper focus and commitment from those concerned, even very difficult experiences can be overcome and a path to improvement set out.  

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?

Well, Llywydd, I take full responsibility for everything that I did and decided when I was health Minister, in the many, many questions that I was asked on the floor of this Senedd and answered at the time. I visited the Hergest unit while I was the health Minister, partly in response to the correspondence that I was receiving about it. I found a beleaguered but very committed staff, determined every day to try to make a difference in the lives of those people whose illness required in-patient mental health attention. Those people were determined, despite all the criticism, to come into work every day to do their best, and that's what I think happens every day, ever since, by those people who provide those services in north Wales. The Member, as ever, has never a good word to say for anybody who works for the health service—[Interruption.] Well, I haven't heard a good word said yet. We'll see if he can manage one now. Those people deserve support from people in this Chamber, not asking what we are going to do to conduct some sort of retrospective trawl to see who can be held to blame. My belief is that, with the new management of the health service in north Wales—. And I had an opportunity, Llywydd, yesterday to discuss with the chair of the health board, the new chief executive and the person in charge of mental health services the plans they have to go on building on the improvements that they have been able to bring about. Many further improvements are necessary, all of that recognised by the people responsible on the ground, but looking ahead to build from that, to make sure that the services provided to people in north Wales are of a quality and a standard and of a consistency that they would wish to see.

First Minister, I am very disappointed by your response. I have not denigrated in any way the people on the front lines of our health service who are delivering high-quality care under great pressure day in, day out. What I'm asking you is: will you accept some responsibility for what happened in north Wales to its mental health services, given that you were the health Minister at the time? Where's the accountability, where's the apology to those individuals who suffered as a result of that delay in action? You evaded responsibility then and you're now trying to do the same, not just in relation to mental health services in north Wales, but also of course in relation to your decisions around the pandemic.

So, can I ask you a slightly different question? Will you and your coalition partners in Plaid Cymru learn the lessons from the past? Will you stop the dithering and will you listen to the calls of grieving families that are echoing in my ears, and no doubt echoing in yours, and take now swift action—not delayed action—to commission a Wales-specific COVID inquiry as soon as possible to learn the lessons from this pandemic and to make sure they're not repeated in the future?

Well, Llywydd, amongst his more offensive remarks, the Member did manage to squeeze a sentence out to recognise the high quality of care provided for his constituents in north Wales. I discussed the whole business of an inquiry with Michael Gove, the Minister responsible for this matter in the UK Government last week. I received further assurances from him of the commitment of the Conservative UK Government to an inquiry that will provide the answers that Welsh families need. He told me that he was well aware of the actions of the Welsh Conservative party in attempting to undermine the agreement that I have reached with the Prime Minister. It continues yet again here today. He may not be prepared to trust what I am told by his party members in Government in Westminster; until I see evidence that they are not prepared to do what they tell me every time I discuss it with them—[Interruption.] Every time I discuss it with them, they tell me they are determined to provide an inquiry that will provide the answers that people who speak to me and to him—. I will believe them until I see evidence that what they're saying to me is not true. He has had no trust in what they say to me from the outset.

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. I thought Darren Millar was remarkably reticent today about the co-operation agreement. Maybe, I don't know, he's regretting some of his attack lines overnight. But they said—and you said—that the agreement does nothing to help the people of Wales: tell that to the 200,000 children that will now receive free school meals as a result of that; tell that to the extra thousands of children that will receive free childcare. They say it does nothing for the NHS and yet, at its heart is the creation of a national care service that will make the single biggest contribution imaginable to solving the long-term challenges of the health service. We pledge together to feed our children and care for our elderly, and all they can come up with is their usual negativity. I'm not surprised The Daily Telegraph doesn't like radical action on second homes, but when they and the Tories line up against Wales, isn't that the surest sign that we must be doing something right?

Well, Llywydd, by the end of this Senedd term, it'll be 25 years in the wilderness for the Welsh Conservative Party, and as we've heard overnight and heard again today, they work very hard to deserve that position. I'll just point out—they won't like it again; I can see them shaking their heads from here—straight after the election, we had a debate here on the floor of the Senedd; much was said about the need to work together on issues on which we agreed. I wrote immediately after that to the leader of the Welsh Conservative Party here and I wrote to the leader of Plaid Cymru. I received a reply from the leader of Plaid Cymru; I received nothing at all from the leader of the Welsh Conservatives.FootnoteLink That's why they've never been anywhere near Government in this place, because they simply lack the maturity—the capacity, even—ever to be part of Government here. They're in the wilderness because it's where they deserve to be.

Correction from the First Minister

As we say in the foreword to our agreement, the people of Wales in voting to create our democracy also wanted a new kind of politics. Now maybe we can forgive, and indeed pity, the Conservatives for being trapped in their Westminster mindset; many of them after all would rather be there than here. They see the world in binary opposites; we try and draw upon the great Welsh tradition of co-operation. I referred to Robert Owen in my remarks yesterday, talking about a Wales built through the co-operation of all to the benefit of each. Out of that tradition we have created a new model, a bespoke agreement between one party in Government and one party in opposition, which nobody could have foreseen. But it is part of that desire for a new politics that built this institution and most people in Wales will welcome it because they don't want politicians who play Westminster parlour games; they want their elected representatives to work together to come up with solutions to our many problems. Isn't that, after all, the entire point of democracy?

Llywydd, Adam Price is absolutely right to point to the way in which, ever since devolution, it has been possible to create agreements between progressive parties here; parties with ideas, parties with a willingness to take on the responsibility of being in Government. The very first summer that I worked in the then Assembly, Llywydd, the summer of the year 2000, every week I met with the head of staff of the Liberal Democrat party here, and we fashioned an agreement that that autumn led to the first cross-party Government here in Wales. We thought at the time that we were doing something very strange and unusual, and indeed I remember going with the then First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, to meetings of the Labour Party in which the strangeness and the unusual thing that he had done was fully borne in on him.

Since then, in successive Senedd terms, we have shown that here in Wales we are able to do things differently, that we are able to fashion a different sort of politics, in the way that Adam Price has said. The agreement that his party and mine have struck is different to any previous form of agreement, but that is because we were prepared to do the difficult thing, which is to find the creativity, to find the imagination, and to find the area for agreement between us. As a result, we will be able to achieve things in this Senedd for people right across Wales that might not have been possible otherwise. I think that will be welcomed. I think people outside the Senedd do expect us to work together when we can, on the things for which we have agreement, and they will see the practical fruits of that over the next three years.

Whatever the views of one on the content of the agreement, there are no two ways that this is a radical agreement that will deliver on some of the things that campaigners have been fighting for over decades, such as managing the housing market. But surely nobody could disagree that our citizens should be able to access correct information to hold us all to account, and it's clear to everyone that that isn't happening as it should at the moment. Now, to look at the London-based media that, to be fair, actually took the trouble of reporting on this development in Welsh politics yesterday, the ignorance was striking. One report referred to 15 Plaid Cymru Members of the Senedd and another mentioned that Plaid Cymru was the third party within Welsh Government. Shouldn't everyone be able to unite behind the opportunity provided by the agreement to close that democratic deficit and to create a media landscape in Wales that serves the needs of our people and empowers them to participate in our democracy?

I agree with Adam Price because the democratic deficit is clear for everyone to see when they read what the press in London has said about almost everything that goes on here in Wales, and they did the same yesterday as well. At the end of the day, Llywydd, as we both mentioned yesterday, it will be in the hands of the people of Wales to make those decisions after the agreement. If the people of Wales can see what we're doing, the innovative things and ambitious things that we're trying to do, I'm sure that that will be appreciated. But it's in their hands at the end of the day.

Question 3 now, from Joyce Watson.