Radical reform is needed to remove the secrecy and duplicity in Scottish health issues. Overall, health is better run in Scotland than in England but the Scottish Government has to get a grip on this dark side.

The latest controversy sees health ministers accused of pushing Lothian health bosses to keep a report on a threatened children's ward secret until after the May elections. This started with Health Secretary Shona Robison querying early publication. Lothian officials eventually agreed to a delay.

Ministers have developed a relationship with the country's 14 boards that is not healthy. In this instance, the accusation is that the Government had put pressure on the board. Increasingly, elected ministers have allowed unelected health boards to dominate and failed to oppose their diktats. That may please boards, making them more "agreeable" to government “requests”, but it is not good for patients. Ministers weren’t elected to hand boards billions of pounds while failing to challenge them on legitimate issues.

The lack of protection for patients is scandalous. You can forget most official bodies set up to “champion” patients – those Potemkin villages that cost millions of pounds but that contain only chocolate fire guards. Today, Scottish NHS whistleblowers are launching a campaign to protect health workers from losing their careers after exposing dangers to patients. Whistleblowers found official “help” bodies useless; So do campaigners on other health issues.

Patients’ views and warnings are brushed aside regularly by health boards and the Scottish Government.

For more than a year, I’ve tracked an example involving patients and MSPs being assured repeatedly that a Glasgow hospital was not under threat. Now, a leaked report shows the facility is on a hit list of proposed closures or cuts. The hospital is the Centre for Integrative Care, (CIC) the former Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital, classed as a “national resource for all Scotland”.

This modern hospital has almost 9,000 patient visits annually and specialises in chronic conditions including multiple sclerosis, diabetes, cancer, migraine, Parkinson’s, arthritic diseases, depression, Crohn’s, fibromyalgia, chronic pain and ME.

But recently several boards against homeopathy have blocked their patients, despite 100 per cent patient support for the CIC. It’s now down to only four boards sending regularly as anti homeopathy moves spread into Scotland from England.

Earlier this month, Ms Robison wrote to CIC patient campaigner Catherine Hughes, supporting the denials of the CIC’s host board in Glasgow about any threat to the hospital. Ms Robison wrote she was “reiterating the assurances given by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) that there are currently no plans to either change the services delivered there or to close the facility”.

Seven days later, on January 14, the board’s hit list was leaked, showing the CIC was on it. The reason given – other boards refusing to fund patients – had also been challenged by Robert Calderwood, NHSGGC’s chief executive. He wrote on December 3 to Holyrood’s Public Petitions Committee, responding to their questions: “You asked if the funding that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde receives from other NHS boards is crucial to the CIC being viable. In response, I would advise no, given the relatively small number of patients that are referred to the centre from outside NHSGGC.”

But the leaked hit list showed that his officials identified “reduced XBF flows” (external board funding) as the reason. Catherine Hughes says: “Patients are shattered by not knowing who or what to believe. It looks like ministers want to get past the May election and are telling us anything till then.”

Jim Hume, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, led six MSPs from all parties who appealed unsuccessfully to the Health Secretary to intervene from last February onwards to stop the biggest loss: hundreds of Lanarkshire patients forced to switch to conventional services. He called the CIC “a treatment lifeline”.

Yesterday, Ms Robison’s spokeswoman described the cuts document as an “internal discussion paper”, not an “approved plan”, and said that a further budget rise meant that NHSGGC would have “a record budget of £2,078.9 million”.

But she did not address the question: “Did ministers know of the hit list when they reassured people?”

The Lanarkshire case was crying out for intervention. It was board diktat, not democracy. So who protects patients’ interests? Oh, numerous publicly paid bodies. These are health’s Potemkin villages: shiny facades, behind which tumbleweed blows and there is little hope. Boards and bureaucrats dominate. You wouldn’t know Scotland has an elected parliament.

Here are three health “procedures”:

* Public Consultation. This system was denounced as a sham as early as 2002 by an MSP on Holyrood’s health committee who stated: “People feel that consultation processes are a sham: the health board goes through the motions, then does what it wants regardless”

That MSP, then in opposition, was Nicola Sturgeon. So why does this continue when she is First Minister? Look at the result of Lanarkshire’s recent consultation. Despite a majority of 4,800 (80.6 per cent) voting to retain CIC services, a mere nine board members swept patients and public aside. Ms Robison still declined to intervene.

* Closure and cutbacks: The Scottish Health Council (SHC) costs Scottish taxpayers £2.3 million a year in regard to “protecting the patient voice”. Boards take their closure proposals to the council.

What isn’t publicised is that these are private meetings between SHC and board officials. Local MSPs aren’t invited. The SHC almost always backs a board’s view on whether a closure is major or minor; only if the category is “major” does an elected minister decide. Lanarkshire’s decision about refering patients to the CIC was rated minor, to the anger of MSPs. Labour’s Elaine Smith, whose Coatbridge constituency has a CIC clinic set for closure, said: “Many believe that forcing patients out of the protection of NHS run homeopathy services is a major change. And MSPs should not be excluded from talks affecting their constituents.”

* Equality Impact Assessments (EIA): Boards must compile these on health closures. The most useless of the Potemkin villages I contacted was the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), not to be confused with the helpful Scottish Human Rights Commission. Even the Scottish Health Council criticised Lanarkshire’s EIA but was ignored.

The EHRC promotes impact assessments. But its Scottish office said it did not look at EIAs and boards did not need to submit them. So what’s the point? The EHRC suggested, astonishingly, that someone challenging an EIA could go for a judicial review. So people could spend thousands of pounds because this public body refused to comment? This quango costs more than £20m a year, UK wide, and was described as “useless” four years ago when there were moves to scrap it.

If the Scottish Government doesn’t act properly for patients and tackle the secrecy levels, there is no other body to do so.