REVEALED Holyrood snub to crisis talks weeks before waste jobs axe
Fury over health secretary’s rebuff to firm
Scotland’s Health Secretary refused to meet the owner of a crisis-hit clinical waste firm weeks before it collapsed, the Sunday Mail can reveal.
Hundreds of Healthcare Environmental Services (HES) staff were made redundant without pay over Christmas after the NHS pulled the plug on its contracts.
The company was found to have been stockpiling massive quantities of waste – including body parts and blood – that should have been incinerated.
But emai ls passed to this newspaper show Cabinet Secretary Jeane Freeman snubbed requests for meetings from the firm’s owner Garry Pettigrew to discuss his firm’s plight.
In a message dated December 3, he wrote: “Dear Ms Freeman, I note that we have never yet received a response to a meeting to discuss the var ious issues being experienced by this business by forces within the UK Government.
“Would it be possible to arrange a very quick meeting to discuss the current state of affairs.” But a curt reply from one of Freeman’s staff noted a previous meeting Pettigrew had been given with an official from jobs quango Scottish Enterprise.
It added: “This is the follow-up meeting referred to in the Cabinet Secretary’s response… I assume your response to my emai l of December 3 concludes deliberations on this matter.”
A furious Pettigrew then wrote: “I won’t chase this any further as it is clear we will not receive any support and obviously you are the wrong person, and your Health Minister doesn’t care, so the 400 jobs will be on your conscious (sic) and whatever the cost so be it.”
Less than three weeks later, 150 staff in Shotts, Lanarkshire, and a further 250 across the UK were left penniless after being made redundant w ithout thei r December wage.
Pettigrew claimed a lack of incinerator capacity across the UK had forced him to stockpile but the NHS dumped his firm and is expected to bring in Spanish operator Tradebe in April to take over.
Labour’s shadow health secretary Monica Lennon said: “In August, the UK Government warned the Scottish Government that the f irm in charge of Scotland’s clinical waste was in trouble. The future of hundreds of Scottish jobs and the day-to-day running of our NHS was in jeopardy, yet now it
emerges that the health secretar y snubbed meetings with the company.
“HES has not emerged well from this scandal, having dumped its workers at Christmas without pay, but neither has Jeane Freeman.
“It took Jeane Freeman until January 23 to break her silence on the clinical waste crisis.”
HES is now under criminal investigation by the Environment Agency in England. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has also conf irmed it issued enforcement notices.
Nobody from HES could be reached for comment and metal containers have been placed at the Shotts depot entrance.
The Scottish Government said: “Scottish Government officials have been in regular contact with Mr Pettigrew. This includes a meeting in October to discuss the specific support available to HES.” A spokesman said Freeman did not attend the October meeting.