Meeting of the Parliament 19 March 2026 [Draft]
I suggest that John Swinney looks Kimberly Darroch in the eye and makes those same comments, because she was lied to. She was not told the truth about how her daughter was killed, and we have seen all the consequences that resulted from that in the eight years that followed. Frankly, I will call out a lie when it is a lie. For 10 years, patients have been lied to about safety standards at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital; for 10 years, staff have been bullied and gaslit; and for 10 years, the public have not been told the truth.
For the past two months, John Swinney has insisted that all of the Queen Elizabeth university hospital is safe, all while he was receiving internal warnings about infection risks and the health board was drawing up plans to rebuild parts of the hospital. The bone marrow transplant ward needs to be replaced. That proves that, for 10 years, patients have been lied to about safety standards at the hospital.
Therefore, I ask again: why was the lie more important to John Swinney than patient safety?