5. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the recent Healthcare Environment Inspectorate report on Hairmyres hospital. (S4O-03705)

Reducing healthcare associated infections in Scotland is a key priority for the Scottish Government. The inspection report revealed unacceptable standards in Hairmyres hospital, and I have made it clear that NHS Lanarkshire must address the issues that have been highlighted, as a matter of priority. I know that the board is taking the report very seriously and has drawn up an action plan that details how it intends to resolve the issues and to prevent them from occurring again.

A support team led by Health Protection Scotland is working with the health board to help it to rectify the issues that were raised in the report. The Healthcare Environment Inspectorate will continue to inspect the hospital to ensure that the lessons identified are being taken forward and that the cleanliness, quality and safety of services are maintained at all times.

It is extremely important that patients and the public continue to have confidence in the cleanliness of Scottish hospitals and the quality of NHS Scotland services. That is why we have introduced the inspections as one of a range of measures to tackle healthcare associated infections.

People were shocked by the report, which said that blood and bodily fluids were contaminating trolleys, scales, beds and handrails, that there were faeces on the walls and dirt on the shower floors, and that there was a build-up of dust in a ward that was supposed to have just been deep cleaned. That demonstrates an unprecedented and unacceptable deterioration in standards at Hairmyres hospital. Why have the standards declined so much under this Government? Does the Cabinet secretary believe that there is a connection with the findings of last year’s Healthcare Improvement Scotland report on NHS Lanarkshire?

The Deputy Presiding Officer:

Can I hurry you along, please?

Does the report not confirm that Hairmyres hospital and the national health service in Lanarkshire are reaching breaking point?

I gently remind Margaret McCulloch that Hairmyres hospital is a private finance initiative contracted hospital. One of the great tragedies of the previous Administration is that £50 million of NHS Lanarkshire’s budget every year is spent on PFI charges. That equates to 25 per cent of all the PFI charges across Scotland—[Interruption.]

The Deputy Presiding Officer:

Order, please, so that we can hear the Cabinet secretary.

Therefore, trying to blame the situation on the Scottish Government is, with all due respect, absurd. The reason why that has happened at the hospital is that people did not carry out their duties. As I have said—I agree with Margaret McCulloch on this point—that is totally unacceptable.

I am instructing my officials to prepare and issue a tender for a deep-dive review of the PFI contract at Hairmyres, because I am not satisfied that it is providing best value for money for the Scottish taxpayer.

Can the Cabinet secretary better explain why the significant hygiene failings at Hairmyres were allowed to get to the current state? Does he agree that it is simply a case that they took their eye off the ball on key issues such as hospital hygiene while they were busy campaigning in the referendum?

The inspection system is clearly welcome, but I must say that I called for it two years before it was introduced, and it was introduced in England two years earlier.

The Cabinet secretary has made great play of the role of the non-executives: having them walk round and make sure that things happen. How does he feel about a situation in which there has been an unannounced report, a discussion with the board about the problem, then a follow-up report that showed that a ward that was supposedly deep cleaned had not been deep cleaned? Where were the non-execs in all that? That part of the problem is even more unacceptable.

The problem is not being taken seriously by boards because our inspection system can only report to the cabinet secretary—I appreciate that he is trying to deal with the problem—and it does not have the teeth to enforce the sort of cleaning that we all want to see.

I say very gently to Richard Simpson that he was a Minister in the Government before this Government.

I was not.

At one point he was. If he was so keen on inspections, why did his Administration not introduce them? Why did he wait for us to do it?

However, like me, Richard Simpson is absolutely correct to say that it is right to have the inspection regime. Clearly there has been a failure to keep Hairmyres clean, which is a failure of management there. I expect the board of NHS Lanarkshire—I would expect it of any health board—to take an active interest in establishing why it happened, why it was allowed to continue, why it was not identified and why corrective action was not taken much quicker.

Richard Simpson raises a valid point on all those questions, which, through my officials, I have already communicated in no uncertain terms to the board and senior management team at NHS Lanarkshire.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the cleaners in Hairmyres was involved in the referendum campaign, so I do not think that the link between the referendum campaign and the standard of cleanliness is very strong.

I absolutely accept that the failures in cleanliness are totally unacceptable, but we did not have those inspections under the previous Administration. It did not inspect; it did not check. We are being open and transparent and we are managing the situation on an on-going basis, which is why such things, which previously were never reported, are now being flagged up.