IT will take time for the new Council of Ministers to settle down but it is already clear that there will be some interesting tensions within the new executive. During the next four years, the recently elected Chief Minister may well get to give a speech in the middle of a building site, proudly announcing that work on the new Hospital is underway. But where will that site be?
Senator Le Fondré set out his point of view in his nomination session. He described his support for a review across a small number of sites to be completed by the end of the year which would give the public confidence that the right site would be chosen.
In the last term he sat on the Hospital Review Scrutiny Panel and consistently voted against the previous Council of Ministers and supported further work before a hospital site was chosen. Four out of the five Scrutiny members publicly maintained the same position. The fifth member, Deputy Renouf supported the previous Health Minister in his desire to doggedly pursue the Gloucester Road site.
Deputy Renouf is now the Health Minister, having successfully challenged the Chief Minister’s nominee and he has stated that he will undertake an ‘assurance’ review of the hospital decision.
This would bring together all the existing work into a single document to confirm that the work behind the choice of site has been undertaken appropriately.
He has also suggested that this work could run in parallel to work on the planning application. This approach only makes sense if the outcome is pre-ordained – that the current site will be confirmed.
In reality, many people including at least five members of the new Council of Ministers, are still concerned that the decision-making leading up to the current position was flawed and that a different site could provide a better long-term solution.
Accepting the current site carries significant disadvantages – the site is too small and some services will need to be provided from other locations, staff and patients will need to cope with the disruption of the new hospital being built around them for several years.
A new hospital will undoubtedly be built and it will serve Islanders for the next 50 years. The new Health Minister must take the views of Islanders and fellow politicians seriously and support a meaningful review of the alternative locations for the new hospital.
