Scottish Hospitals Inquiry: Drive private profit out of the NHS

Jimmy Haddow

The Scottish Hospitals Inquiry was established in August 2020 (costing to date £31 million) to investigate serious patient safety concerns following infections and at least six deaths at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) campus in Glasgow, including a 10-year-old child, a young adult of 23 and a 73 year old pensioner.

The inquiry is examining the design, construction, and maintenance of the Glasgow site and the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh (RHCYP).

A series of bacterial infections, particularly affecting immunocompromised children in Edinburgh and Glasgow, raised questions about the safety of the hospital’s water and ventilation systems.

Investigations focused on whether the building environment at both the QEUH and the delayed Edinburgh hospital contributed to patient harm. Reports of pigeon droppings near ventilation intakes, water contamination, and issues with air pressure prompted investigation into whether the hospitals were fit for purpose.

The inquiry was examining how the delayed opening of the Edinburgh facility impacted patient safety, as well as the overall management of construction projects by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian.

Both hospitals were plagued with building problems and accusations of pushing for the opening of for political expedience by the SNP Scottish government.

The Inquiry was established in September 2019 because of a catalogue of complaints from families of patients who had become ill or died through infections while in hospital and from medical whistleblowers who had raised complaints and were bullied by NHS management.

Part of the evidence from the families was that they were lied to, demeaned and smeared when they challenged the management of the hospitals about water contamination in the hospitals that caused infections to patients with blood disorders and cancer.

It was only in January 2026 that the Health Boards of both hospitals admitted to the Inquiry that it was the water system that caused the infections of some cancer patients.

The Inquiry was told in March 2024 that NHS Lothian accepted the handover of the RHCYP unfinished to stop the private consortium – IHSL Group – behind the deal going bust just months before the facility was due to open in July 2019.

If IHSL went bust then NHS Lothian faced paying out at least £150 million to get the project finished.
The financing of the building of both hospitals seems to be a complicated formulation of public money, including the Non-Profit Distributing public private partnership (NPD).

All are a drain on public financial resources. For example, NHS Lothian have around a dozen PFI/PPP/NPD funded projects and the associated costs of servicing and maintaining contracts was sucking over £100 million a year from NHS Lothian’s revenue budget. That is enough to pay the salaries for up to 3000 extra nurses, doctors and other staff in the Lothian NHS.

The public inquiry into the hospitals scandal should not be run by the establishment. A genuine inquiry should be organised by the trade unions in the NHS, with patient and family representatives and the working class movement as a whole.

Socialist Party Scotland fights for a socialist NHS. We say end the profit making con of PFI/PPP/NPD schemes and nationalise all the big private companies and banks without compensation involved in the NHS. Place the pharmaceutical industry under workers’ control and management and plan for a socialist NHS.