Labour's Iain Gray laid an extraordinary charge yesterday. It may yet get the attention it deserves. We shall see.
Labour's Iain Gray laid an extraordinary charge yesterday. It may yet get the attention it deserves. We shall see.
With Alex Salmond unwell, his deputy and Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, was always liable to face a few uncomfortable moments. Vale of Leven, C Diff, bereaved families, serious BBC allegations: all of these were, in the Americanism, "on her watch".
So Mr Gray wants a public inquiry. As he pointed out, Ms Sturgeon would not have hesitated, in opposition, to demand the same. Yet while she refused to reject such a course, she also refused to endorse it. Mr Gray said this: "What is she afraid of? What is she trying to cover up?"
In every other circumstance I can imagine, in any other parliamentary exchange, Ms Sturgeon would have demanded a retraction. Instead, she passed over the remark - or the insinuation - without real comment.
Hospital-acquired infections did not arrive with the advent of the SNP. Ms Sturgeon has, as she said yesterday, watched her own grandmother battle C Diff. You can "bandy statistics", as the Tories' Annabel Goldie was informed, but the Health Minister's seriousness of purpose is not disputed generally.
Yet Mr Gray had something specific, I think, in mind. Ms Sturgeon had something specific, I think, that was in her mind, but beyond discussion or disclosure.
Why, then, were the protagonists arguing over due process and the prosecuting authorities?
To repeat: the Deputy First Minister did not say that a public inquiry is either impossible or unthinkable. Her efforts to defend her government's record, her own record, and the quasi-official attempts, thus far, to explain the Vale of Leven catastrophe were good enough. Still the thoughts niggled.
For one thing, Mr Gray went to lengths to remind us that the hospital in question was - is? - in no sense unique. People continue to acquire illnesses from our medical services nationwide. That cannot, as even a sketch-writer knows, be right. But if it is truly happening across the country, we have a problem.
Ms Sturgeon talked, instead, of due process. The phrase has no actual grounding in our legal tradition, but never mind. It means that politicians (and the press) should do nothing that might interfere with the machinery of justice. So why was the Deputy First Minister mentioning the Lord Advocate yesterday?
Mr Gray's substantive question was this: "Will she confirm today that a public inquiry will be forthcoming? Yes or no?"
For Ms Sturgeon and the SNP, on an average day, that one would require no brains, even of the variety still recognised in deepest East Lothian.
"Certainly," she would have said. "Let's talk about NHS practices under Labour by all means. Let's remind the world - or I can remind you now - that privatised cleaning ended on my watch, and that the empowerment of senior nurses resumed thanks to me." The fact is that Ms Sturgeon declined the opportunity.
Mr Gray said it was "an issue of the utmost urgency"; the Deputy FM wasn't arguing. The Labour man said that "she herself is the only obstacle"; herself's thoughts appeared to be elsewhere. Something extraordinary is unfolding, I think.
In a routine world, I would be scribbling on a tough Thursday for Alex Salmond's reliable stand-in.
Yesterday felt different. Ms Goldie was exemplary in her seriousness and Tavish Scott said a noble phrase or two on the debauching of Scottish banking. Neither spoke to the (unspoken) point.
What does the law have to say about the veracity of statements made in public records? You may in due course, as lawyers sometimes remark, hear more.
