WHILST there are on-going issues with the ventilation systems at children's hospitals in Edinburgh and Glasgow, I find it appalling that political parties believe that this is an opportune time to make political capital out of the death of a child by trying to blame the Health Secretary personally (“Heads should roll: Sturgeon feels heat over hospital crisis”, The Herald, September 13).
The Labour and Conservative parties have accused her of failing to take control of both projects from the health boards involved. Yet were these not the same parties that accused the Scottish Government of being obsessed with centralising power as happened, for example ,with the creation of Police Scotland? I’m sorry, but you cannot have it both ways.
When it comes to capital projects the Scottish Government provides the funding whilst execution is devolved to the regional health boards. The KPMG report which was published last week ("Children’s hospital will not open until 2020... and cost £16m to fix", The Herald, September Septewber 12) makes it quite clear that the presence of the Scottish Government at meetings with regard to the Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital was solely to do with monitoring finance and not to check technical compliance. That latter role is reserved for the project managers appointed by the health board. They will employ specialised technical advisers to report back to them if they don’t already have the expertise in house. The board in turn reports to the Scottish Government as and when major issues arise if they have been highlighted by the project managers. The Scottish Government is essentially at arms length in this whole process, and that’s the way it should be.
Having worked on both projects I have been contacted by journalists for comment as a result of the accumulating publicity. I have declined to respond to most of them but in one recent telephone call I stressed that in my view the Health Secretary is not the one at fault here. Indeed she was to be commended for taking decisive action in halting the opening of the critical care unit in Edinburgh at the 11th hour. She had nothing to gain politically by doing this and everything to lose.
Having stressed that latter point and having agreed copy, my comments were then syndicated to other newspapers without my knowledge or agreement. All but one of the newspapers that chose to carry the story conspicuously omitted the sentence where I explained why blame cannot be attached to the Health Secretary when there is no evidence to back this up.
To me that suggests that there may be an agenda politicising the issue rather than looking objectively as to who was responsible for what and when. Such an approach is regrettable because it will only hamper the forthcoming inquiry. People will simply label any outcome that does not suit their preconceptions as a whitewash, and yet again no lessons will be learnt.
Robert Menzies, Falkirk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel