North
Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood (pictured) has called on the Welsh
Health Minister, Vaughan Gething, to resign for “failing to deliver" the
required improvement at the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) which covers Llangollen.
Speaking
in the Welsh Conservatives debate on the troubled North Wales Health Board, Mr
Isherwood expressed concern that BCUHB has been in Special Measures for coming
up to four years, said that the Health Minister’s “repeated statements that he
‘expects to see action’ have become hollow”, and called for him to stand down.
Mr
Isherwood said: “The
self-proclaimed party of the NHS, Labour, is responsible for just seven Health
Boards in Wales. It is shocking that five of these are in special measures of
some kind.
“The largest of these,
serving 1 million people, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board in North
Wales, will not be celebrating the fact that next Saturday will be four years
since it was placed into special measures. Ministerial oversight of these
special measures arrangements has been with the current Health Minister.
“No
Conservative Prime Minister has ever cut an NHS budget. Under Labour, however,
Wales was the only UK Nation to see a real terms decrease in identifiable
expenditure on health between 2010 and 2016.
“Betsi Cadwaladr entered
special measures after horrific reports emanated from the Tawel Fan Mental
Health ward.
“The Welsh Labour
Government has failed to heed the warnings of the Ockenden Review of this - and
consistently ignored the concerns of families involved.
“They have instead relied
on the 2018 HASCAS review which was described as a cover-up by the families."
He added: “In January Donna Ockenden said she had seen
‘insufficient progress’ in improving mental health services and revealed that
staff had told her services ‘were going backwards’.
“Her 2018 Review was repeatedly informed that
from the Health Board’s birth in October 2009, there was very significant cause
for concern in the systems, structures and processes of governance underpinning
a range of services provided by Betsi Cadwaladr.
“Speaking here in May last year, I asked the Health
Minister why the conclusions of the HASCAS report Commissioned by Betsi
Cadwaladr did not stack up with the findings of Donna Ockenden’s 2015 report,
which the Welsh Government had accepted - or with a Healthcare Inspectorate
Wales Report, or Dementia Care mapping work, both in 2013, the year that
the Health Board states that it was alerted to serious concerns regarding
patient care on the Tawel Fan ward. In fact, I had highlighted concerns
in 2009.
“While
frontline staff are working incredibly hard, last month the Public Accounts
Committee found that the Welsh Government’s intervention with the Board has had
‘little practical impact’.
“The North Wales Community
Health Council stated that it totally agreed with this report’s recommendations
- and referred to a letter sent to the Health Minister in which they stated
there is a belief among its members that Special Measures is now ‘the new
normal’ and ‘appears to have lost its impact’.
Mr Isherwood also
highlighted that the latest A&E figures show that Betsi Cadwaladr remains
the worst performing in Wales, and that Wrexham Maelor hospital’s A&E
department only saw half of its patients within four hours, and referred to the
fact that in January, the North Wales Coroner, John Gittins, stated that
‘ambulance hold ups, staff shortages and the difficulty of getting speedy
A&E care have contributed to numerous deaths and may claim more
lives’.
He
added: “This Health Minister’s repeated statement that he ‘expects to see
action’ have become hollow.
“He
needs to accept his responsibility for failing to deliver the required
improvement at the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, and honourably
resign.”
