WALES' health secretary Vaughan Gething has paid a personal tribute to staff at Abergavenny's Nevill Hall Hospital.

The Labour minister was speaking after the hospital appeared in the BBC programme To Provide All People, which was created by Welsh poet Owen Sheers to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the NHS and was broadcast last week.

Speaking in the Assembly Mr Gething said: "It wasn't a work of fiction. It was telling the stories of people in and around the service.

"It was particularly poignant for me because that's where my father passed away - Nevill Hall.

"I remember getting a tearful call from my mother and going to the house that they had retired to in Llangynidr and finding the remnants of where my father had fallen over, visiting him in hospital, talking to him.

"I was the last one in my family to talk to him in Nevill Hall.

"I don't just remember the fact that they cared for my father, but I particularly remember the kindness and the compassion they showed to my mother, because she could not accept that he wasn't coming back.

"When he was on a ventilator she didn't believe that he wasn't going to come back, and the fact that they did that gently, but they did it as they should have done, not to provide false hope, I thought was a great kindness.

"And it's that kindness and compassion that I think people remember when they think of the best part of our health service - not just the machines, but the people who provide and deliver the care."

To Provide All People, parts of which were filmed at Nevill Hall, was based on interviews with NHS workers and featured among its cast Newport-born Michael Sheen, as well as Martin Freeman, Eve Myles and Sian Phillips.