Scottish health bosses are being forced to divert resources towards preparing for the upcoming Covid-19 public inquiries, we have learned.
A team of eight key staff has already been established inside NHS Scotland’s national services division to work exclusively on the preparations for the UK and Scottish inquiries.
The department confirmed it had already spent more than £40,000 on the work, with the bill expected to exceed £400,000 over the next two years.
Local health boards, including Highland and Grampian, have also confirmed they are involved in preparing for the hearings.
The mounting costs and staff impact have emerged at a time of huge pressure on health services, laid bare by a series of charts we published last month as part of a special project.
As well as the NHS, the board of the Dundee-based Care Inspectorate watchdog, which oversees the regulation of care homes, was recently told that its legal costs were over-budget, in part due to preparations for the pandemic inquiries.
It discussed having to recruit a temporary staff member to help get ready for the inquiries, which are likely to spend time focussing on the huge number of coronavirus deaths in care homes.
‘Significant burden’
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said ministers may need to act to help support public bodies involved in the inquiries.
“Public inquiries are complex beasts and the Covid inquiry could be one of the trickiest of all time given the scale of the crisis and the scope that this inquiry will need to cover,” he said.
“If this is imposing a significant burden on health boards then the Scottish Government will have to step in and provide additional support.
“There can be no excuse for a failure to learn the lessons of the pandemic.”
The Scottish inquiry into the pandemic response, which aims to learn lessons and make recommendations to ministers, is being chaired by Lady Poole.
A website has been set-up and an application process is under way for those wishing to be “core participants”, with a detailed timetable on the later stages still to be released.
A total of £422,000 had already been spent on the Scottish inquiry by March this year.
The UK inquiry, meanwhile, is being chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett and will begin hearing evidence in spring next year.
NHS National Services Scotland provides key legal, procurement and other services to the rest of the organisation, including local health boards.
As well as the wider NHS response, its own role in stockpiling PPE could be considered by the inquiries, after it emerged that some supplies had been allowed to run low in the years before the Covid-19 outbreak.
In response to our freedom of information request, NHS National Services Scotland said it was instructing legal counsel to “assist with some aspects of work” associated with the Covid inquires.
It also has an eight-strong team working on the preparations, featuring its head of public inquiry and scrutiny, a project manager, three executive support officers, helped by two senior solicitors and an associate director.
While they are only estimates, the division projects spending £144,243 on inquiry-related staff costs this year, and another £148,000 next year.
A further £124,000 of expenditure is anticipated by the organisation for “programme support” over the next two years.
Chief Executive Mary Morgan said: “NHS National Services Scotland will support the aims of the public inquiry in line with our values of openness, integrity and care.”
The Scottish Government and the Care Inspectorate refused to disclose its spending projections in response to our requests for information.
No fixed budget
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Costs will be determined to a large extent by how the inquiry is run by the independent chair, Lady Poole.
“For that reason, as with other inquiries, ministers have not set a fixed budget or cost estimate for the inquiry.”
An NHS Highland spokeswoman said: “Along with the other NHS boards in Scotland, Highland will contribute to both the UK and Scottish Covid inquiries.
“Preparations are at a very early stage and we are not therefore able to comment in any greater detail.”
A spokeswoman for NHS Grampian said: “We will be managing Scottish public inquiries into the pandemic within existing resources.
“We are beginning to work out what information needs to be stored, and how, so this can be easily retrieved.”