NAT MINISTERS DID PRESSURE SCANDAL HOSPITAL CHIEFS

THE Glasgow health board WAS put “under pressure” from the Scottish Government over child cancer services at the QEUH, its former chief exec claimed.

- EXCLUSIVE BY BEN BORLAND

Speaking about the urgency to begin paedaetric bone marrow transplants in a facility that was not ready, Robert Calderwood said NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde "was under pressure from the government to why a national service was not being performed".

And describing the period before the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital began treating patients on April 27, 2015 - just over a week before the general election - he said "people were not being put under pressure" from the board itself.

Earlier this month, the health board triggered a huge political headache for the SNP by declaring that "pressure was applied to open the hospital on time and on budget, and it is now clear the hospital opened too early".

But both Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, who were first minister and deputy first minister at the time, have denied having anything to do with it.

At the weekend, NHS GGC issued a clarification to its closing statement to the public inquiry into the scandal to say the pressure had been "general in nature" and came from within the board itself.

At least 84 child cancer patients fell ill after catching infections and at least two died. Overall, seven deaths at the £842m facility are being probed by prosecutors. One was Milly Main, 10, who died in 2017 after contracting a waterlinked infection while being treated for leukaemia in the Schiehallion unit at the Royal Hospital for Children (RHC) on the QEUH campus.

Giving evidence to the inquiry last year, Mr Calderwood was asked about a meeting in September 2015 to discuss the bone marrow transplant rooms in wards 2A/2b (the Schiehallion unit).