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.