John Bannon
The truth will eventually be outed

As Scottish Review readers will be aware, I as a member of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Board wrote on 1 February 2010 to the cabinet secretary for health and wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon, expressing my serious concern about various aspects of a board proposal to redevelop Blawarthill Hospital in Glasgow and the implications such a decision would have on the future of St Margaret of Scotland Hospice. To her credit, Ms Sturgeon immediately requested a full report from the NHS board chairman, Andrew Robertson, a report which I understand has been sent to the cabinet secretary although I have still to see its content.
     When I decided to write the letter to the cabinet secretary, I did so not on a whim but after a great deal of soul-searching. I believe what I did was the correct thing to do as the matter was so serious that I could not sit idly by and allow a decision to come to pass without full scrutiny. Its implications would be far-reaching and affect the most vulnerable members of our society. What we are talking about are the very people who need us most and it is a sorry state of affairs when an alleged caring organisation such as the NHS allows private developers to profit at the expense of the frailest members of our communities. Why would anyone wish to dismantle the outstanding care which St Margaret's Hospice provides, care which the NHS should be aspiring to? Sadly pounds seem more important than people.
     In all my years within the NHS, I have not yet come across a proposal which has generated so much anger in the community and uniquely across the political divide. There is not one party within the Scottish Parliament which supports the decision taken by my colleagues in February 2009 and that is why I am delighted that the Scottish Parliament will be debating the issue later this month. I hope the cabinet secretary will come to parliament with a solution to the problem which intransigent minds at Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board created.
     The Scottish Review is to be commended for investigating this whole sorry debacle. I was shocked to learn that correspondence from the Scottish Review to colleagues and myself took more than a week to reach us from the chairman's office. What was the Scottish Review asking which the board did not wish to answer? Why was the director of communications allowed to issue a press statement on our behalf without consulting us first? Consultation is a word which appears to have been erased from some minds at the NHS board.
    
On 16 February 2010 the NHS board met and the chairman, Andrew Robertson, and chief executive, Robert Calderwood, commented on the Blawarthill/St Margaret's Hospice issue. What they did not tell members was that one of their local authority partners, East Dunbartonshire Council, at its meeting on 17 December 2009, instructed its chief executive to write to Ms Sturgeon, expressing the council's concern that the NHS board was pressing ahead with the Blawarthill development and its concern at the implications this would have on the future funding of St Margaret's Hospice. Members of the board have always been assured that the plans had the full support of all local authority partners, including East Dunbartonshire Council.
     The chief executive also said that the plans had the full support of the local community. Unlike many commentators on the issue, I actually reside within the local community and can assure the chief executive that many in the community feel that they were misled as they did not realise in 2000 that the Blawarthill contract was for five years or that the proposals had serious implications for St Margaret's Hospice.
     Let any member of the NHS board tell the public when they first became aware that the contract for the new Blawarthill was for a five-year period. How many of them can say that they knew of the true financials of the land transaction and how many can say that the 2000 proposal was the same as that proposed to the board in 2008 and February 2009? How many were aware that East Dunbartonshire Council has distanced itself from the board decision? How many board members actually visited Blawarthill Hospital and St Margaret's Hospice before reaching their decision?
     There are many more questions which members should have been asking of officers rather than accepting what they had been told in board papers. The decision was fundamentally flawed and there appear to be serious systemic failings at the very heart of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Indeed, only last week I posed other questions to officers involved in taking the project forward but my emails were directed to the head of administration, who, as far as I am aware, has nothing at all to do with the project or its detail – and they wonder why I said I was being frustrated in my attempts to get to the truth. I could go on ad infinitum with the number of questions which remain unanswered but I hope our politicians will receive answers when they debate the matter.
     I have written a further letter to the cabinet secretary asking her to instruct the board chairman to put a halt to contract negotiations until she is in full knowledge of all the facts and at least until parliament has had the opportunity to debate the issue, and I would go one step further by urging the cabinet secretary to have a full, thorough and wholly independent investigation into the matter. The credibility of the NHS board is in tatters. The time has come for the cabinet secretary to intervene and do so as a matter of urgency. The public expects nothing less.

The Scottish Review addressed seven questions to the chairman of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Andrew Robertson, and the other ministerial appointees on the board on 27 January. Twenty-one working days later, we finally received a reply. This will be published in tomorrow's SR.