VIRUS: SOME ERRORS MATTER MORE THAN OTHERS 

Brian Wilson’s Column

A fine old metaphor about “more front than a Glasgow tenement” increasingly applies to Scotland’s relationship with the pandemic.

The façade is confident and largely unscathed while what lies behind is grim. More than 3500 lives have been lost, half of them in the appalling cull through care homes.

Recrimination is pointless unless it serves the immediate purpose of teaching lessons which can be applied with urgency, competence and humility. That is where we seem to fall down lamentably.

The folly of discharging elderly patients from hospitals into care homes was apparent months ago.  This was pointed out from all sorts of sources – including this one –  but the practice continued.

We now know figures provided to MSPs were grossly understated and the Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman, has apologised. I suppose that is progress of a sort but what price was paid over the lost weeks when the issue was in such obvious need of addressing?

The Nike outbreak in Edinburgh remains fundamental to any analysis of how the Scottish Government has handled this crisis.  And let me digress for a moment to answer the demand: “Why not criticise the UK government instead?”

This is not a competition. The UK Government has no shortage of questions to answer but the NHS and social care are devolved. Decisions taken in Scotland determine Scottish outcomes and the decision not to reveal the Nike outbreak was the Scottish Government’s alone.

“Cover-up” is headline shorthand. My preferred phrase is “monumental error of judgement which had far-reaching implications”.  If that had been acknowledged early, even internally, lessons might have been applied.

The defence of patient confidentiality has collapsed. Scottish legislation recognises that public interest prevails in such circumstances. EU data protection law is even more specific where “the control and monitoring of epidemics” is at stake.

Beyond that, we now know that unannounced attempts at contact tracing were a fiasco with some of  the most obvious candidates left unaware. As admitted by Ms Freeman, such tracing as did take place relied on information provided by visiting delegates.

If the outbreak had been revealed, public perceptions of the threat would have been transformed and a far wider range of contacts identified. It is absurd to pretend, as Ms Sturgeon continues to do, that “all appropriate steps were taken to trace contacts”.

That is in the past but, again, what lessons were learned?  Ten weeks later, not a single contract tracer had been recruited so that “test, track and trace” which is finally supposed to resume on June 1^st is riddled with uncertainties.  Why was this not advanced long before now at local levels?

On April 3^rd, the First Minister set a target of 10,000 daily tests by the end of that month and proclaimed: “Proportionately, our target is a bit more ambitious than the UK as a whole”.  Was that important compared to the fact that the target is still nowhere near being met?

Every health jurisdiction in the world which has successfully addressed the pandemic acted early on principles of test, track and trace. Three months in, it is not “insulting” to anyone’s “integrity” – Ms Sturgeon’s favoured deflection for this week – to ask whether any of these building blocks are even now secured in Scotland?

The First Minister has a tough job and her sensitivities deserve respect but the milk of human kindness should flow in both directions. She might have considered that sentiment before turning her fire on Sarah Smith of the BBC.

No reasonable person believes Ms Smith accused her of “enjoying” the pandemic or its awful consequences. However, the SNP’s media supremo, one Erik Geddes, tweeted “shameful”, allowing Scotland’s First Minister to retweet and add her denial of an allegation that had not been made, thereby unleashing the cyberspace storm-troopers against Ms Smith.

It was a ruthless operation in a time of pandemic. If Ms Smith made an error of judgement it was a minor one which certainly did not cost a single human life. There are plenty more important matters to dub “shameful” in this sorry saga.

 WITH A 1000 JOBS GONE, WHAT DOES SSE GIVE SCOTLAND?

Scottish and Southern Energy’s disposal of its retail customers to an outfit called Ovo has produced predictable results.

“Integration” means 2600 jobs lost, 1000 of them in Scotland. SSE call centres in Glasgow and Selkirk will close.

Most customers are in England but a loyal base was in the Highlands where SSE traded on the reputation of the old Hydro Board and the people who work for it.

That was the least of SSE’s considerations when retailing was no longer profitable enough.  Instead, it would concentrate on offshore wind farms. And how has it repaid Scotland in that respect?

Once again, it seems SSE will send abroad major contracts for the Seagreen project off the Angus coast with a few crumbs for Fife.  Former workers at the Arnish yard in Lewis fear it will get nothing.

It is time Scotland’s politicians took the gloves off and reminded SSE that the position of power they hold is not untouchable.

At the time of electricity privatisation, both Scottish companies retained vertical integration – generation, distribution and retail – because of the  esteem they enjoyed among Scottish consumers.

With the emergence of renewable energy, this meant that one tentacle or another of SSE is involved in determining the fate of every project in the north of Scotland.  That is an accident of history and has long been unhealthy.

Having got rid of retail, SSE are no longer vertically integrated.  They have sold off a thousand Scottish jobs via Ovo and done nothing to build Scottish manufacturing capacity in renewables.

 It is time the pieces of that jigsaw were put together and the overall picture considered on its current merits – not the image of 30 years ago.