Inverness and Nairn MSP Fergus Ewing calls for £100 million green buildings fund to be redirected to Highland NHS projects
Fergus Ewing MSP is calling for £100 million of Scottish Government spending on creating greener public buildings to be redirected into NHS building projects.
The member for Inverness and Nairn says there is an urgent need for the reinstatement of health capital spending in the Highlands and described the green public buildings scheme as an “eye-watering” waste of taxpayers’ money.
Mr Ewing argues that this reallocation would enable a number of important capital health projects in the NHS Highland area to proceed.
He has called on Cabinet Secretaries Shona Robison and Neil Gray, responsible for finance and health respectively, to restore previously axed Scottish Government capital funding for crucial Highland health projects.
Mr Ewing suggests this can be achieved by saving £100 million from the Scottish Green Public Sector Estate decarbonisation Scheme, which he describes as “wasting hard-earned taxpayers’ money on a simply eye-watering scale.”
Ewing emphasises the urgent need for many health projects, which are a top priority for the public.
Among them he cites Raigmore Hospital in Inverness and numerous health practices and centres across the north, where funding was cut earlier this year.
The Scottish Government has cited austerity and reduced budgets for those cuts, but Mr Ewing says his research has uncovered staggering amounts of money – up to £100 million – spent on so-called “green” energy schemes to decarbonize public buildings.
The scheme was established under Green MSP Patrick Harvie’s tenure as minister.
Mr Ewing said: “While the Scottish Government pleaded poverty to excuse slashing health spending, they were busily spending taxpayers' money like confetti on projects to remove gas or oil-fired heating systems in public buildings and replace them with heat pumps and the like.
“However, the public has not been told that the costs of these building works have often exceeded the value of the buildings themselves.”
Ewing has written to the Scottish Government and the Permanent Secretary calling for an immediate suspension of the £200 million Scottish Green Public Sector Estate Decarbonisation Scheme.
He highlights an example from Elgin, where the Procurator Fiscal’s office, valued at £275,000 in March 2022, saw green energy works estimated at a staggering £3.56 million - 13 times what the property itself was worth.
Public grant funds amounting to £1.8 million were spent on the project.
The MSP stressed: “No one can argue that these schemes will make an iota of difference to global warming when Scotland emits only one in a thousand of the world’s carbon emissions.
“To the public, it is mind-blowing profligacy on an unimaginable scale.
“It is recklessness, verging on the criminal, to waste £100 million in this way when communities are crying out for vital health projects all over the Highlands and Scotland. They’ve chosen nutty green schemes over urgent health improvements.
“No ordinary property owner or business in Scotland would ever consider spending such amounts on any property.
“Public sector leaders do it because it’s not their money, and Mr Harvie ordered them to.
“They have ignored and shown contempt for their own expenditure rules as set out in the Scottish Government Public Finance Manual, which requires value for money.
“I have referred these cases to the Auditor General and have also asked top officials, including the Permanent Secretary, to suspend this absurd and wasteful scheme and instead use the £100 million for vital health projects needed to treat patients and provide the necessary space safely.”