I cancelled the opening of new £150m hospital says minister

THE Health Secretary personally cancelled the opening of a £150million children’s hospital after ‘overruling’ NHS bosses on safety grounds.

Health chiefs had hoped to run partial services at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Children and Young People despite it being branded ‘unfit for patients’.

The decision to delay its opening was taken on Thursday when a final inspection found problems with the ventilation system in critical care.

Health Secretary Jeane Freeman’s orders to pull the plug came days before staff were due to begin moving from the old hospital site.

She has now has called for a probe into why the problem remained hidden, despite the building being signed off by contractor Multiplex.

The firm has been blamed for ‘botched’ work on Glasgow’s £1billion Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH).

Two patients, one a boy of ten, died at the QEUH in December after contracting Cryptococcus, a fungal infection linked to pigeon droppings, and a third patient, 63-year-old Mito Kaur, died from another fungal infection, Mucor, in March.

Miss Freeman told BBC radio’s Good Morning Scotland yesterday: ‘I made the decision that we should not go ahead at all until I was assured that the hospital was safe.’

When asked if she has overruled NHS Lothian she replied: ‘Yes, I have.’

She added: ‘NHS Lothian was looking at what alternatives there might be in their view to having a partial opening or some kind of work around, but the decision I took was that was too great a risk.

‘I need to be sure that every other area of that hospital meets the national standards and is safe before I will then agree that aspects of it can open.’

Staff had been preparing to transfer from the old hospital in Sciennes to the new site at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in the Little France area. The

‘I made the decision’

move had already been delayed several times.

Miss Freeman is now leading an investigation into how the building’s ventilation system can be ‘upgraded’.

We told yesterday how opposition MPs describe the hospital as ‘unfit for patients’ despite ‘years of planning’. Miss Freeman said a probe will now be launched to find out whether the blame lies with contractors or NHS Lothian.

She said: ‘One of the things I need to find out is why was NHS Lothian so confident that the hospital was meeting all those standards when self-evidently critical care certainly wasn’t.

‘There’s no indication at this point that any fault lies with the contractors themselves.’

The minister said the hospital’s opening will be delayed until further notice, with services moving over in a ‘phased’ order after safety checks are completed.

However Miss Freeman said this is likely to be in ‘months rather than weeks’.