From Michael Green.
AFTER reading the JEP report on the findings of Verita, it has become evident that serious failures of Hospital management have been allowed to continue without redress for many years.

Senator Jim Perchard should be congratulated for having the courage to authorise the Verita investigation during his time as Health and Social Services Minister and Deputy Anne Pryke should also be praised for allowing the investigation to continue after she became Health Minister.

Senator Syvret is justified in claiming that politicians are only nominal heads of the Hospital management. Usually they have neither the expertise nor knowledge of how a hospital is administered and are reliant on hospital administrators to provide them with day-to-day information. Therefore the administrators hold the key to the Pandora’s Box of hospital administration, which Verita has now forced open with all its appalling shortcomings.

As a taxpayer I am concerned by the allegation that it has cost the public purse £1m while a senior surgeon remained suspended. Did he continue to work in the private sector during this period? He is apparently now allowed back to work with his reputation intact.

It is not clear how much, if any, increment he receives from the public purse while acting in the public domain while claiming fees for his work in the private sector, and this should be made clear.

Notwithstanding the fact that he may be paid considerable fees from the public purse, it is reported that the same surgeon as a public employee and paid from the public purse has obtained an injunction to prevent a separate Verita investigation from taking place into his conduct on that fateful day.

Acting in his role as a public employee on the day in question, this appears to be without precedent.
As he has apparently been cleared of any wrong doing, why has he taken this extreme measure which prevents further important facts of the matter from becoming public knowledge?

I note that Senator Ozouf has declared that more managers are needed to add to the present Hospital administration. At a time when that administration has apparently been deemed incompetent, as indicated by the Verita report, the Senator’s remarks are totally inappropriate at the present time.