Stockpiled body parts: Officials have known for months
OFFICIALS have known for months about the stockpiled body parts scandal that has shaken the NHS, the company at the centre of the crisis claims.
The scandal erupted on Thursday when it emerged that hundreds of tonnes of human body parts and medical waste from NHS hospitals had been allowed to pile up across the country.
The Environment Agency has been updated on the crisis every week since January – and was first made aware of problems as long ago as 2015, the firm claims.
Yet the NHS is now having to spend millions on last-minute emergency measures to deal with tonnes of stockpiled waste. Some may be stored in ‘open yards’.
Opposition politicians last night demanded to know why the public has been kept in the dark.
The Environment Agency told the Department of Health and Social Care about the problem in July but the details were only made public on Thursday when leaked documents were revealed by the Health Service Journal.
The company, Healthcare Environmental Services, which is subject to a criminal investigation over stockpiling medical waste, claims it is a victim of a government ‘witch-hunt’.
Instead of burning the material, which includes amputated limbs and waste from cancer treatment, it has been storing it at six sites in England and Scotland. The material also includes old drugs and used equipment.
Last night, the firm was said to be looking to send 750 tonnes of medical waste to Holland. Meanwhile, companies were offered lucrative contracts to shift the waste and were even told environmental regulations would be lowered to help them do so. Some 50 NHS hospitals have been warned they may need to start storing their waste on site, in trailers provided by the Government, rather than sending it to the firm.
In a letter to NHS trusts, seen by the Daily Mail, Garry Pettigrew, managing director of Healthcare Environmental Services, claimed the NHS plan to deal with the crisis was ‘ completely unworkable, illegal and financially unviable’. Two firms in Liverpool and Wrexham, for example, had been asked to store a combined 330 tonnes of waste outside their building, even though it would usually be earmarked ‘incineration only’.
Another in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, had ‘received dispensation’ to store 300 tonnes in an ‘open yard’, he claimed.
Mr Pettigrew wrote: ‘ We have found ourselves in the middle of a witch-hunt towards making this company commercially unviable and [a] personal vendetta being organised behind the scenes to somehow justify putting in place emergency measures.
‘We have highlighted to the Environment Agency, and customers, since October 2015 that there was a serious reduction in incineration capacity. The main reasons for this was... ageing infrastructure, which is unreliable, coupled with no investment in new equipment due to cost constraints from the customer base.’
The Environment Agency has begun a criminal investigation, saying the firm has breached its environmental permits at four sites – in Normanton in West Yorkshire, Bradford, Newcastle upon Tyne and Nottingham.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency said it had issued enforcement notices at sites in Dundee and Shotts.
Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock chaired a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee three weeks ago to discuss the growing volume of waste.
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s health and social care spokesman, said: ‘Given the public health implications and that Cobra was convened it is shocking the Health Secretary didn’t update Parliament last month.’
The Department of Health said there was ‘absolutely no risk to the health of patients or the wider public’, adding that contingency plans were being put in place.
An Environment Agency spokesman said: ‘We are taking enforcement action against the operator, which includes clearance of the excess waste, and have launched a criminal investigation.’
A spokesman for Healthcare Environmental Services said: ‘HES has never stockpiled hundreds of tonnes of human body parts and dangerous waste at any of our sites throughout the UK.’
‘In the middle of a witch-hunt’