Calls for Freeman to quit over latest farce as thousands are sent misleading letters
‘Dismal performance during the pandemic’ ‘Already on borrowed time’
NICOLA Sturgeon is facing growing pressure to axe her Health Secretary after having to apologise yesterday for another coronavirus blunder.
The First Minister’s statement came after it emerged thousands of people with chronic conditions who had been told to ‘shield’ from the infection received letters telling them they could leave their homes again yesterday.
But the correspondence caused mass confusion as a review of shielding was not supposed to take place until ten days later on June 18.
Miss Sturgeon said: ‘Where a letter goes out with the wrong date, I deeply and sincerely apologise for that because mistakes like that should not be adding to the distress that you are already feeling and I can only apologise for that.’
It prompted Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw to tell Miss Sturgeon to ‘take the blinkers off’ and sack Health Secretary Jeane Freeman for her ‘dismal performance’.
Mr Carlaw highlighted a catalogue of errors and mishaps from Miss Freeman, including continuing failures on care home and hospital staff testing.
However, Miss Sturgeon branded his comments ‘disgraceful’ and ‘party politics at its worst’.
Since lockdown around 180,000 vulnerable people – including those receiving chemotherapy or some patients who have undergone transplant surgery – have been asked to ‘shield’ in isolation and avoid face-to-face contact with anyone, including from their own household.
An NHS letter was reportedly sent to 18,000 people in this group in April but clarification was only posted last week after the mistake was highlighted.
Yesterday, Miss Sturgeon announced the period for shielding will be extended to July 31.
But people in this group will be allowed to go outside for exercise for the first time from a week on Thursday.
Mr Carlaw said: ‘Jeane Freeman was already on borrowed time before coronavirus hit.
‘But as this crisis has unfolded, a number of issues have unfolded on her watch which were completely avoidable, and enough is enough.
‘The testing structure under the
SNP has been a disaster, to the point where care homes have been left in the lurch, and now she can’t even say when hospital staff will be routinely tested.
‘The misplaced loyalty shown by the First Minister to her Health
Secretary is having a negative impact on the NHS.
‘A litany of problems had built up before, not least infection deaths of children at the SNP’s flagship hospital in Glasgow, and the continued unacceptable delays of the new Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh. These have been compounded by a dismal performance during the pandemic too.
‘Nicola Sturgeon has to take the blinkers off and find someone who can actually get on top of these problems.’ Miss Sturgeon, who had Miss Freeman at her side as normal during her daily media briefing yesterday, hit back.
She said: ‘I am going to respond to the Tory call this morning because I think the Scottish Tories’ statement this morning is absolutely, utterly disgraceful.
‘Unfortunately, I don’t find it surprising and I say this more in sorrow than in anger. For the last few weeks the Scottish Tories have seemed to me to be not very interested at all in the real issues we are grappling with and dealing with here, they seem to me to be interested only in party politics and trying to undermine a Health Secretary who is literally working round the clock to deal with the most difficult issues any of us have ever dealt with.’
She added: ‘I don’t criticise anybody for subjecting my Government to real and proper scrutiny but during a pandemic calling for the Health Secretary to be sacked is just party politics at its worst. I don’t think it has any place in what we are dealing with right now.’
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