Former NHS Lothian chair claims Health Secretary Jeane Freeman lied at height of Edinburgh's Sick Kids debacle

Ex-health boss lifts lid on what really happened in Sick Kids fiasco

FORMER NHS Lothian chairman Brian Houston has accused Health Secretary Jeane Freeman of telling a lie at the height of the Sick Kids debacle.

FORMER NHS Lothian chairman Brian Houston has accused Health Secretary Jeane Freeman of telling a lie at the height of the Sick Kids debacle.

He said when she announced that the move to the new hospital was being halted at the last minute Ms Freeman wrongly claimed she was overruling NHS Lothian when the health board had not made any recommendation on whether the move should go ahead or not.

In an outspoken interview Mr Houston, who quit in January over “fundamental and irreconcilable” differences with the Health Secretary, also criticised her for denying the NHS was in crisis and described how she said she would fire him if he did not resign.

The new Sick Kids hospital at Little France was delayed because of problems with the ventilation system in critical care

Recalling the day last summer when the Sick Kids crisis broke, he said: “When we got the word from our independent testers there was potentially a showstopping problem with the ventilation systems in critical care it was like a bomb going off. It was devastating.

“I remember Tim Davison [NHS Lothian chief executive] walking into my office white as a sheet and the two of us just couldn’t believe this was happening. The whole place was just knocked sideways by it.”

But he said an emergency meeting of the project team, the NHS Lothian executive team and all their advisers had quickly identified where issues could have arisen.

Jeane Freeman

And another meeting had drawn up options over what to do about the new building - go ahead with the move regardless, halt everything or go ahead with some kind of partial move.

Mr Houston said: “That meeting of expert parties agreed an evaluation of four options but they did not make a recommendation. It simply said here is our risk assessment against each of these four options and that was given to Scottish Government.

“We were then told we had to do nothing, the matter was being taken out of our hands. We were not to take any action until the Cabinet Secretary had made her decision, nor were we allowed to communicate to anybody, internally or externally, including staff.

“We sat for the best part of a day biting our nails, then we got the announcement from on high which basically said ‘I have decided and I am overruling NHS Lothian’ that this move will not take place until we have 100 per cent assured ourselves the building is entirely safe in every possible dimension’. Nobody was arguing with the decision having been taken, but to come out and say she was overruling NHS Lothian was a lie.”

The hospital is now scheduled to open in the autumn of this year.

Mr Houston said about ten days later he was summoned to a meeting with Ms Freeman at Holyrood. By this time, she had received a report from consultants KPMG on the governance of the project. It had traced the problem to confusion over guidelines on ventilation requirements but said the governance structure was operating as planned.

“She slammed the KPMG report down in front of me and told me this was terrible, we were all indictable, we were going to be escalated (put in special measures), people would be brought in and she was taking charge. I attempted to put an alternative point of view, I told her how I interpreted the report, but I got no response, no engagement, just repetition of accusations and this is what is happening.”

Two weeks later, he and Mr Davison - who is taking early retirement in August - were asked to meet Ms Freeman at the current Sick Kids site. Also present were Malcolm Wright, director general of health and social care, and chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood.

“The three of them confronted us in a room at Sciennes and we were asked to give an account of ourselves and what had been happening.

“I told her how devastated, upset, angry and frustrated everyone in NHS Lothian was, we appreciated this was a catastrophe and the important thing was to consider how we were going to get it fixed. Tim then spent about 20 minutes going through in great detail exactly what we had done in the preceding few weeks. We got absolutely zero engagement. The response from the Cabinet Secretary was contemptuous. She didn’t argue, she didn’t debate. She simply kept expressing and signifying her impatience and contempt. It was embarrassing.

“Tim sand I walked back across the Meadows to Waverley Gate. I think by the time we entered the Meadows we were both writing our resignation letters. By the time we got to Waverley Gate we had changed our minds and decided ‘We’re not going to be treated like this, we’re going to stick with it’.”

In October Mr Houston was asked to a meeting with Mr Wright and told it was his annual performance appraisal. That came as a surprise.

“I had been there six and a half years and never had an appraisal before.”

After some discussion, he told Mr Wright he would rather be talking about what should be happening with the Sick Kids and cancer waiting times - so they did. “I described very openly and honestly how the board and the executive team were responding to it and how devastated we all were.”

He also said he and Mr Davison constantly reassessed their own positions and whether they should go. “The reaction I got was ‘Oh no, you mustn’t’. The thought of Tim or me walking out the door was clearly quite a daunting prospect.”

But two weeks later that all changed.

“I got call from Malcolm’s office asking me to go to a further meeting. I went along and he immediately launched into an attack. It was just accusation upon accusation of negligence and incompetence.

”The first meeting had been two colleagues sharing concerns about a serious situation. The second meeting was ‘You are to blame’. He was clearly determined that he was going to lay all this on me and I was determined I wasn’t having that. I verbally countered every point he raised. It was just a stand-off. I went away thinking ‘This begins to feel a bit terminal’.”

A formal letter containing his appraisal followed, to which Mr Houston gave a point-by-point reply. Then came the final meeting with Ms Freeman.

“She asked me if I accepted direct accountability for the disastrous delay of the Sick Kids. I said ‘I think that depends on your definition of accountability. If it is the populist view ‘this happened on your watch, therefore heads must roll’ then yes I’m accountable by that definition.

However, that’s not my definition of accountability. In this case I’m satisfied I have exercised my accountability, as has the board, by responding as rapidly and effectively as possible to the situation as soon as it was known’.”

Ms Freeman said she stood by Mr Wright’s appraisal. “I said ‘If you give me a couple of days I will think about what you have said because it seems we have to come up with an alternative way of working together or I shall resign’. And I said ‘At the moment the latter is the probably outcome’ - at which point she said ‘Yes and if you don’t resign I will fire you’.”

He said he had considered taking out a grievance for unfair treatment, but decided against.

“I have been directly accused and forced effectively into a constructive dismissal situation. If I was an employee that’s what we would be talking about.”