Glan Clwyd Hospital: Crabb call to 'show some leadership'

Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb has called on Health Minister Mark Drakeford to "show some leadership" after an "appalling" report on mental health care at Glan Clwyd Hospital.

He told BBC Radio Wales it was "about the worst case of abuse and negligence I've ever come across in Wales".

There was a "huge accountability gap" and "absence of responsibilities".

The Welsh government has defended its health inspection regime as being "largely fit for purpose".

Families who took part in a review of care at the Tawel Fan unit in Bodelwyddan described patients being treated like animals in a zoo.

Mr Crabb told the Jason Mohammad programme that "very troubling questions" needed to be asked about management failings at the Betsi Cadwaladr health board, which runs NHS services in north Wales.

He also said the "buck stopped" with the Welsh Labour government.

"There are people in Wales who can get this right and should be getting this right," he said.

Mr Crabb added, the NHS in England had learnt from the mistakes identified in the Stafford Hospital scandal and that the "same sort of culture change" should happen in Wales.

Earlier, Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams said the damning report, external showed that Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) had failed as the "final backstop" to ensure care was "first class".

A member of the assembly's Health and Social Care Committee, she told BBC's Good Morning Wales: "All the mechanisms internally within the trust, and then externally, failed to provide the warning signs and the action that the patients, and the families of those patients, needed in this particular case.

"And we really now have to consider whether Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, in its current form, is fit for purpose and can provide that reassurance that we need."

Dr Kate Chamberlain, chief executive of HIW, said the body "is committed to providing a robust and effective system".

A Welsh government spokesman said an independent review of HIW by Wales' former older people's commissioner Ruth Marks found "its role and function is largely fit for purpose".

A Green Paper looking at her recommendation of a single regulator for health and social care would be published this year, the spokesman added.