6. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Mental health services

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:00 pm on 8 December 2021.

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Photo of Darren Millar Darren Millar Conservative 5:00, 8 December 2021

I'm afraid, Jenny Rathbone, we welcomed the fact that the Betsi Cadwaladr health board was placed into special measures back in June 2015. You can check the record. I was the shadow health Minister at the time and I was cheering on Mark Drakeford for taking that brave decision, because I believed, with all sincerity, that it was going to make the difference on the ground that we needed to see. It didn't. It didn't make the difference. That's why it's still got huge challenges, the Betsi Cadwaladr health board, in terms of the delivery of mental health care, even today.

I'm simply making statements of fact here. There has been no apology from the Welsh Government for its failure to respond to the Holden report back in 2013 when it was initially made available. There has been no explanation whatsoever as to why there was such a significant delay between that report being published and then the health board being placed in special measures. Essentially, the same things were happening on Hergest as happened at Tawel Fan. If the health board had been placed into special measures at the time that the Holden report was available to the Welsh Government back in 2013, then some of those things that happened on Tawel Fan could have been prevented. That is something that I believe that the Welsh Government ought to apologise for, because I think that if we could have avoided people coming to harm, then it's unacceptable simply to walk on by and to say that things have improved and not to acknowledge the harm that has been caused. And I'm afraid that's the situation we're in today in this Chamber.

I very much hope—[Interruption.] I very much hope, Deputy Minister, that you will be able to reflect on that position, on your inability to apologise to those patients and their loved ones for what's happened, and that you will continue, hopefully, to work with the health board's leadership to be able to turn this unacceptable situation, which has prevailed for far too long, around so that we can have a healthcare service for mental health patients in north Wales that we can be proud of. I want to be proud of it. I want it to be the best in the world, but the fact of the matter is it isn't.