A senior politician from Ripon has described the Harrogate Nightingale as a “costly PR stunt”, amid calls for an inquiry.
Lord Newby’s criticism comes after NHS England said this week the hospital, which cost £27 million to set up, would be decommissioned at the end of the month.
It has not treated a single covid patient, prompting calls for an inquiry.
Lord Newby, the Liberal Democrat leader in the House of Lords, who lives in Ripon, said:
“The Nightingales were a costly PR stunt.
“They could never be used as planned because there was never the staffing for them. They were introduced because the government was desperate to be seen to be responding effectively to the pandemic, which at the time looked to be potentially out of control.
“The Harrogate Nightingale should have been closed months ago, in order to avoid the high cost of maintenance and so that Harrogate could begin to plan for its reopening.”
Jim Clark, a Conservative who represents Harrogate Harlow on Harrogate Borough Council, repeated his
call for an inquiry on BBC Look North yesterday.
He told the programme:
“It wasn’t an insurance policy in Harrogate because we didn’t have the staff to man it and I think it’s then been discovered that as soon as it was built it wasn’t essentially fit for purpose.”
The Stray Ferret asked Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative MP Andrew Jones and Richard Cooper, leader of the Conservative-controlled Harrogate Borough Council whether they supported calls for an inquiry. Neither replied.
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Asked the same question on Look North, Cllr Cooper said the location of the Nightingale Hospitals was likely to be considered as part of a wider covid inquiry. He added:
“But we’ve been pleased to host the Nightingale and to host the thousands of diagnostic tests that have been carried out there.”
Pat Marsh, leader of the Liberal Democrats on Harrogate Borough Council, supported calls for an inquiry, adding:
“Over a decade of Conservative cuts has led to an NHS operating on a shoestring. Whether there was ever the staff to run such a Nightingale hospital, should it have been toward full capacity, needs to be made clear.”
Margaret Smith, chair of Harrogate and Knaresborough Labour Party, said the Nightingales were “a legitimate insurance policy” in the early days of covid when it seemed hospitals could be overwhelmed. She added:
“There seems little point in wasting any more public money on an inquiry at this stage.”
