There have been protests over the future of Llandudno Hospital

Labour's Brian Gibbons said his party was investing in hospitals and opposition claims could bring "distress and confusion" to patients.

Launching its assembly election campaign, Labour promised to "guarantee the future" of Llandudno Hospital, which is in the new seat of Aberconwy.

But Plaid criticised plans to move coronary services from the hospital.

A high-profile campaign has been running over proposed changes to services at Llandudno Hospital.

Dr Gibbons, who has been assembly government health minister for the past two years, said the local health board had been asked to decide the "type of services that are appropriate to Llandudno" and that this did not amount to a downgrading.

He was asked on BBC Radio Wales if he could guarantee coronary services would continue.

He told the Good Morning Wales programme: "I think there is a general acceptance that the coronary services in Llandudno are not meeting current standards.

"If people are asking that the acute coronary services remain, then they will have to answer why do they want to maintain services that don't meet current safe standards," he said.

Later, Dr Gibbons accused Plaid of mounting a "concerted campaign of scaremongering".

Plaid Cymru health spokesperson Helen Mary Jones said Labour was "running scared" and that withdrawing the services would amount to a downgrading.

"A Plaid government would stop this re-configuration process and start a real dialogue with people about what services we need where," she said.

Ms Jones added: "This bungled process has made it more difficult to engage people with a positive dialogue about what the real future of health services out to be".

Patient care

Jenny Randerson, for the Liberal Democrats, argued that Labour had created a "mess" by "botched management".

She said: "The problem is that there were no plans in place for what you would get instead of the services in Llandudno Hospital.

"That is the key problem with Labour's way of doing it," she added.

Conservative Alun Cairns suggested that many of the problems the NHS was facing were because too many decisions were being taken by a "politician sitting behind a desk in Cardiff Bay".

Mr Cairns said: "We want a clinician-led service rather than a politician-led service, that is the difference between what we want and what the Labour Party are proposing".