Professor John Robertson OBA
In a particularly shameful piece of reporting, we see knowingly misleading figures on maintenance and the utterly unfounded association of those with infections linked only by Anas Sarwar and the poor parents he groomed for deeply cynical political reasons.
First, that £78 million for 10 years of maintenance is an average of £7.8m per year for a building that cost £842 million to build in the first place. So, annual maintenance costs are less than 1 PERCENT! (0.93%) of that. I’m surprised it’s not more.
The link between supposed building failures, infections and deaths – NONE. See:
The politicising of child deaths by Labour:
Finally, how all of Scotland’s hospitals are well within a normal mortality range and none are dangerous outliers like some in NHS England:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
These continual attacks by Labour are very tiresome. I just happened on one by her Dameship in the Scotsman 4 days ago attacking Scottish infrastructure and transport, supposedly a piece about how beautiful Scotland is but managing to well and truly trash its services and its government. Being the Scotsman I couldn’t read past the headline because of the paywall, but it’s not hard to imagine how an article according to Jackie Baillie goes.
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Scotland wouldn’t even have a usable road bridge across the Firth of Forth, a major crucial route for goods and services and the public, if had been up to the BritNat English parties at Holyrood. There’d be no borders railway either, had the English BritNat parties had anything to do with it. The negativity stories by the media will be ratcheted up in the next few months.
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Problems with the Forth Road Bridge came to light when the Lab/LibDem Coalition was in power at Holyrood. They hummed and hated about replacing it and came up with a figure of £4.5 Billion to build a replacement.
Luckily they dragged their feet for so long and the SNP took office. The bridge they built cost £1.5 Billion if I remember correctly. A fraction of the cost the Coalition had proposed.
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I suppose I was one of the lucky ones ; I had an operation in the QEUH a few years ago …and survived !
I wonder if the Witch Finder General Sarwar would allow his children , in an emergency , to be treated in this hospital , which he appears to have made his life’s work to demean , denigrate and , supposedly , have closed permanently .
IF this hospital is so bad why has he , as a caring and compassionate by-stander with no axe to grind (LoL! ) not called for the closure of countless English hospitals which are demonstrably failing in their duty of care to the public ?
Sarwar has demonstrated without doubt that he is the embodiment of the worst traits of a politician ”on the make” ; he will not hesitate to turn any family tragedy into a propaganda exercise for him and his increasingly distasteful party .
Older readers will remember the name Peter Rachman .He was notorious as a slum landlord and his name became synonymous with slums and those who profited from them . Today Sarwar is synonymous with ‘ambulance chasing ‘ and gleefully feeding off the tragedies of child deaths for his own political advancement . What a despicable man !
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Well said .
It has indeed been sickening how much Sarwar chooses to exploit, for political purposes, those who grieve for their lost loved ones and also for those whose loved ones are considered to be vulnerable.
His ambition makes him more than willing to use anyone or any cause that he assumes will increase his chances of becoming the next FM, for then him eventually to end up, so he hopes, in the HOL as an ex ‘Scottish’ FM.
Pity then that so many who are being exploited by him cannot , in their emotional state, see that Sarwar’s true intentions on their tragic situations is solely to gain a political advantage over the SNP , as opposed to him wanting to “change” improve, or take a “new direction” upon anything connected to that which he states he opposes or challenges as an opposition party member to the SNP, who currently as a party form the Scottish government.
Liz S
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Sarwar and his Scottish branch acolytes are amateur opportunists who have absolutely NOTHING behind all their ranting and havering.
That people still continue to vote for that party is nothing short of astounding (and depressing).
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You’re not the only one with a good story to tell about this hospital. Eva Comrie also posted they saved her life by amputating her leg. She was enthusiastic about the care she received.
What annoys me most of all is that the negativity surrounding this hospital, thanks mainly to the Labour party in Scotland not only spreading stories, but actively searching them out, leaving people wondering if it’s a safe place to be treated.
Surely there has to be an official public reply to half assed articles like this.
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Any idea what Celtic Park or Hampden’s annual maintenance bill is ? QEUH is the size of 11 football pitches, and runs 24hrs every day of the year….
I did have to chuckle at Sarwar’s ” It’s the single biggest scandal in the devolution era. Those who are responsible for this should be in jail “, to which the thought came, ‘Ok Anas, you first or Sarah Smith ?’
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Devolution era? Time to end that ”era’ then, and secure independence. Did he really say people should be in jail? For what, spending money on maintenance of a major Scottish hospital. That hospital wouldn’t be there had it been up to his grifting BritNats at Holyrood, and it won’t be if they take control of Scotland next year,
(a terrifying thought) because they’ll sell off Scotland’s NHS lock stock and barrel straight away.
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The new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, one of Labour’s PFI hospitals was budgeted at £150 million to build but ended up costing £180 million to build. The PFI cost will be £1.3 Billion but Lothian Health Board will not own it.
As well as the PFI costs the Health Board had to pay an ANNUAL maintenance cost of £60 Million. Dwarfs any such costs for QEUH
https://www.scotsman.com/health/ps60m-a-year-contract-thrown-into-doubt-1620362
The SNP eventually managed to get that annual cost reduced. They also managed to buy out the private parking contract so that staff and visitors no longer have to pay parking charges.
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Lies but also hypocrisy……..
Remember last week at PMQ’s the staged ‘performance’ between the then Labour MP Brian Leishman and his then Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in respect to Alexander Dennis Bus Manufacturers.
Starmer stated that “The SNP should be backing Scottish workers” …….as he said that ” the SNP are ordering Buses from China“.
Apparently that was hilarious for many of the MP’s in the HOC as so many burst out laughing at the ‘China connection’.
Well it has now been reported that the big Labour flagship policy GB Energy has a connection to China……
So then would all of those same MP’s , especially those from the Labour party, also find this below headline from the BBC just as hilarious as Starmer’s snide comment about the SNP ordering buses from China ?………..
“‘Great British Energy solar panels’ were made in China“.
In China ?
Yes….indeed.
In fact it was reported on the BBC website under UK Politics that:
“The first schools in England to install what the (UK Labour) government described as “Great British Energy solar panels” bought them from Chinese firms, the BBC has learned”.
“The first 11 schools involved in the GB Energy scheme bought solar panels from Aiko and Longi, two Chinese firms”
However the Labour UK government had declared that this scheme was :
“The first major project for Great British Energy – a company owned by the British people, for the British people”.
However it seems that the materials and the products that were used for this GB Energy scheme were not apparently manufactured by British people in Britain but instead by Chinese people in China………..so it seems Labour are not backing ‘British workers’ or indeed British/UK manufacturers who make Solar panels.
“Labour MP Sarah Champion said GB Energy should be buying solar panels from companies in the UK rather than China“.
Labour HQ and also their branch offices are always caught out when they pretend to be indignant upon matters that they state are failures of the SNP , while their Labour HQ have themselves made identical decisions, like say order goods from the same country as the SNP have ordered from (China), but somehow that is supposed to be seen as ‘different’ for Labour and perhaps also to be seen as an exception to the (UK) rule.
Truth will out and that’s what has happened here…..as it seems Labour, as the UK government, are not averse to ordering from China themselves, especially for their UK government projects under one of their flagship policies for their UK. (GB Energy).
The hypocrisy comes in when they, Labour, under their leader, Keir Starmer, tries to gain an undeserved political advantage from what they say are bad and wrong decisions that have been made by another political party who govern elsewhere in the UK.
Then for Labour to present those decisions made by that other party (SNP) as being somehow unique only to that other party (SNP), when Labour and their leader have made the exact same decisions.
Liz S
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It speaks volumes on how dire the Record / Sunday Mail journalism has become and the equally dire current Scottish Labour polling, to come up with this slightly rehashed old garbage.
The constant connection by Anus Sarwar to the sad death of children and then trying to somehow link it to a imagined failing at the QEUH hospital is just sickening.
It would be hard to identify a more spineless and weak Labour politician.
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Sorry, that should have read Anas Sarwar.
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And now we have this.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/20/nhs-facing-absolutely-shocking-27bn-bill-for-maternity-failings-in-england
Do you think the QEUH story might have been an attempt at distraction?
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Mist definitely.
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Moist ceurtainly
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I could’ve sworn I typed most, not mist.😊
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£7.8m per annum maintenance budget for a large NHS hospital: leaving aside the impact of inflation, is this an unreasonably big number when compared to other hospital maintenance budgets?
Question: What is the typical annual maintenance budget for a major NHS hospital in England and Wales?
ChatGPT response: ‘Here’s a summary of how the NHS spends on maintenance across major hospitals in England and Wales:
Overview of NHS Maintenance Budgets
1. National scale: The total maintenance backlog—the investment needed to bring NHS buildings up to standard—for 2023/24 sits at £13.8 billion (my emphasis)
Total annual running costs for the NHS estate in 2022/23 were about £12.4 billion. Backlog estimates exceed the annual capital budget, estimated at around £5 billion per year
2. Yearly repairs and maintenance spending: In 2021/22, around £1.01 billion was spent on maintaining the NHS hospital estate in England—rising from £0.99 billion the prior year. This translates to roughly £1 billion per year being allocated to upkeep and corrective maintenance across hospitals.
3. Backlog per trust: On average, each NHS trust (around 200‑plus trusts) reports a backlog maintenance cost of roughly £48 million. A few large trusts carry substantial individual backlogs (e.g. Guy’s & St Thomas’ with £463 million; Airedale at £414 million)
Typical Annual Maintenance Budget for a Major NHS Hospital: Assuming a major acute hospital is part of a large multi‑site trust: annual maintenance spend per major hospital tends to fall in the region of £5 million to £10 million, based on spreading the £1 billion sector‑wide spend across ~200 trusts and multiple hospital sites. For very large trusts with multiple hospitals, the budget per trust may be in the tens of millions annually, particularly where urgent “high‑risk” backlog exists.
Example: A large trust carrying a backlog of £300–400 million may spend £10–20 million or more annually just to address immediate safety‑critical works, while routine maintenance remains underfunded.
Key Takeaways: ~£1 billion/year spent on hospital maintenance; £13.8 billion backlog requiring remediation.
Average backlog per trust ~£48 million – Major trusts shoulder much higher costs (hundreds of millions).
Per hospital: estimated £5–10 million/year for maintenance. Larger acute hospitals within bigger trusts likely see budgets of £10 million+ to tackle critical issues.
Important Context: The maintenance backlog has grown rapidly—over 13% annually—with urgent “high‑risk” repairs escalating to £2.3 billion+ . Investment levels have been lagging the scale of need, causing infrastructure to deteriorate and increasing risks to staff and patients
Some trusts face individual backlogs exceeding £400 million—outstripping annual repairs budgets and stretching capital plans.’
Based on the above, the maintenance budget for the Glasgow hospital is wholly unexceptional, when benchmarked against the NHS in England. Indeed, NHS England’s and Westminster governments’ underfunding creates a maintenance backlog which serves no one’s best interest.
Report from the National Audit Office on UK government properties (January 22, 2025): ‘Maintaining public service facilities‘.
Para 1.13: ‘Based on information provided by the 17 main government departments, the maintenance backlog across government was at least £49 billion as of October 2024. This equates to approximately 4% of the government’s total expenditure in 2023-24, or around £710 for each person living in the UK (based on mid-2023 population estimates). The OGP has estimated that the actual cost of remediation (the real cost of repairs to improve property condition, rather than simply maintaining it) could be substantially higher than the maintenance backlog, in some cases up to 10 times higher.’
From Figure 5: Hospitals and other NHS property – as of October 2024, the maintenance backlog its estimated to be £13.8 billion! The NAO notes: ‘The £13.8 billion for hospitals and other NHS properties includes the sites which contribute to NHS England’s annual Estates Returns Information Collection.’
In short, the Sunday Mail/Daily Record piece and its front page attempt to curry voters’ favour for the British Labour Party’s Anas Sarwar seems on the face of it to exemplify politically partisan, agenda driven journalism deliberately designed to misinform, indeed to deceive voters in Scotland.
A £49 billion maintenance backlog for UK central government buildings, including £13.8 billion for NHS England alone – and the totals could well be much higher. If the Westminster government had properly resourced the upkeep of its property estate – i.e. spent money into the economy – rather than opt for cost cutting and austerity, presumably the Barnett consequential payments for NI, Scotland and Wales would have been considerable!
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