IN any new build, it is not unusual to have to attend to some snagging problems. If, however, a building is not fit for purpose on completion, then there has clearly been a failure to observe due diligence. Questions then need to be asked who signed off on behalf of those who needed the building (“The twists and turns in decade-long project blighted by delays and disputes ... and costing NHS a fortune”, The Herald, August 6).
Into any such contract there should surely be built-in safeguards allowing for financial redress for any failure to hand over a building ready and fit for purpose.
The private finance model employed by the SNP Government is in the short term a way of keeping capital expenditure off the books but in the long term is a crippling expense upon the country's resources.
Someone has to be held responsible for the fiasco which is the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh.
You would have expected it to be written into the contract that there would be a suspension of payments until the building is not only up to the standard required for its purpose but also up and running.
This situation throws great doubt upon the competence of those responsible for overseeing the construction of the project through all its stages.
Carelessness and indeed recklessness in handling public funds are totally unacceptable and those who failed in their duty should be taken to task for their poor oversight of this necessary element in public health provision in our capital city.
Denis Bruce,
Bishopbriggs.
I HAVE no problem with any criticism being aimed at Jeane Freeman for her job as Health Secretary, as long as it is consistent and even-handed. The Mid Staffs Trust Stafford Hospital scandal was described as the worst health scandal in England for a decade. But at no time was pressure put on Andy Burnham to quit his post, even though it “was on his watch”.
There have been several genuine health scandals in England over the last decade: Furness General Hospital, Bristol Royal, etc. At no point were health ministers in England pressurised to resign by opposition politicians or the media. These were health issues, and were properly dealt with by public inquiry, while in Scotland it is problems with poor design, oversight and construction of a building. So why are things different in Scotland with the political opposition, the press and the BBC (publicly funded, but hardly neutral in Scotland) all jumping on a Health Minister whose job is peripheral to the problem?
GR Weir,
Ochiltree.
HOW many more hospital fiascos need to occur before someone in government takes responsibility?
Duncan Macintyre,
Greenock.
WE are informed that clinicians were pressurised to sign off the plan for the much-delayed and flawed Sick Kids in Edinburgh ("Clinicians ‘pressured’ to sign off flawed hospital plan", The Herald, August 6). As a former senior clinician in the NHS I have a concept of the pressures applied, but I would be interested to learn details.
Pressure implies reprisal if pressure is resisted; indeed it is axiomatic that pressure is not pressure without threat of reprisal. This appears to be a further example of bullying which remains rife within NHS Scotland. The timing of the pressure appears likely to have been during the tenure of a previous Health Secretary, perhaps Nicola Sturgeon who was appointed and mentored by Alex Salmond.
Chickens coming home to roost? Perhaps there should be an exclamation mark and not a question mark at the end of the previous sentence.
Dr William Durward,
Bearsden.
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