No comment... Health Minister stays silent on hospital report

Friday 16 November 2018

Attempts to question the Health Minister over a new report exposing major shortcomings in how the site of the £466million future hospital was decided have been stonewalled, with the Deputy maintaining his silence over why he didn't support its findings.

Despite repeated grilling from a panel of politicians at a quarterly Scrutiny hearing yesterday, the Health Minister Deputy Richard Renouf refused to explain his views or comment on the document.

Published on Wednesday by a panel of politicians tasked with reviewing the issue by the Chief Minister, the 124-page report catalogued a series of decisions by the previous Council of Ministers leading to a “political mess” in which both rejuvenating the current hospital, or starting afresh elsewhere, are now riddled with significant risks to both patients and the States’ finances.

It concluded that revamping the current site would result in a hospital that is not big enough for future needs with little room to expand its facilities in line with medical and population demands. However finding and building on an alternative site would involve significant difficulties in maintaining the current hospital in the interim.

The new States Assembly will have to decide whether they want to endorse their predecessors’ plan or seek a new site and set the project back in terms of money, time and hard work in early 2019.

Pictured: The Health Minister was questioned by the Health and Social Security Panel.

The Health Minister appeared in front of the Health and Social Security Scrutiny Panel just a day after the release of the report. In the first minutes of the meeting, he was asked by Deputy Kevin Pamplin to share his view and comments on the report, given that the report was heavily caveated that he had rejected most of its findings. Despite the insistence of the St. Saviour Deputy, the Health Minister refused to offer any comment on the subject.

He said that the document had been written to advise the Council of Ministers, who had not yet discussed its contents at the time of the meeting. "The discussions should proceed before we have any further discussion in a public arena," he said, adding later that he didn't wish to disclose his views, as he didn't feel it was good governance.

"This is a government project and policy, which if there are doubts about, it first needs to be discussed at the government level," he continued. "It is not helpful for me now to be adding fuel to the fire... It's unfair for me to give you an opinion when I haven’t had a chance to give it to the Council of Ministers."

Pictured: Deputies Carina Alves and Trevor Pointon were on the panel reviewing the decision to build the hospital on the current side.

Faced with his persistence, Deputy Renouf challenged the panel on how appropriate it was that he should be grilled by people involved in writing the report.

"You are asking me to respond to Constable Taylor’s report in Scrutiny," he explained. "But how you can offer independent Scrutiny while two of your members [Deputies Carina Alves and Trevor Pointon] were on Constable Taylor’s panel."

Chairman of the Panel, Deputy Mary Le Hegarat, argued that it was appropriate for her panel to ask for the Minister's opinion because the report had been made public. She said that they would be expected by the public to ask questions. She then asked Deputy Renouf whether it would have been more "prudent" for the Chief Minister, Senator John le Fondré, to bring the report to the Council of Minister before making it public.

"Yes there is a strong case for this," he admitted, before adding, "but I'm not criticising the decision that has been made."

He then said "I fully appreciate why you need to ask the question but I hope you appreciate why I can't answer," before the Panel moved on to another subject.

 Deputy Renouf has so far also declined to respond to questions on the report from the media.