‘We can’t get to bottom of why rising cost was hidden’

It was revealed earlier this year that some staff knew in February 2023 that the estimated cost of phase two of the project had increased by up to £30m. – from £120m. to £150m. – but concealed it from the committee until December.

Deputy Brouard and his senior officials have spent recent weeks investigating the breakdown in communication, but he told a Scrutiny hearing yesterday that he was none the wiser.

‘We have not been able to find out the reason,’ he said. ‘We have asked that question, thoroughly investigated, and been unable to come to a reason why it was held back.’

HSC received States approval and planning permission for phase two before the increase in cost estimates was known and is now battling to reduce the bill without cutting the scope or quality of the project, or face going back to the Assembly.

Phase two was meant to start this year and take four years to complete. But HSC officials admitted yesterday that the budget fiasco had left it with no clear idea about when building would start and when an extension would open.

The States has said that it no longer employs any of the officials who knew about the soaring cost early last year and has claimed that the information was also concealed from senior officials at HSC until October, who then took nearly two months before briefing their president and his committee.

One of those officials, Dermot Mullen, the senior responsible officer for the redevelopment of the hospital, told the Scrutiny hearing that he took ‘full responsibility’ for not informing his committee when he first learned of the cost crisis.

‘Because of my clinical background, I asked for due diligence to be done to understand if this was really as it seemed,’ said Mr Mullen.

‘I do not believe that different governance would have had a different outcome. This was about behaviour.

‘I accept responsibility for not having verbally briefed the committee prior to 19 December.’

Deputy Brouard asked Mr Mullen what he had told his officials when he was elected as HSC president in October 2020. Mr Mullen said they had been ‘instructed that there were to be no surprises’.

HSC politicians and officials faced two hours of questioning from a panel of Deputies Yvonne Burford, Simon Fairclough, Andrea Dudley-Owen and Peter Roffey.

Deputies Brouard and Dudley-Owen clashed over whether HSC politicians had maintained adequate oversight of the redevelopment project in the months before and after the soaring cost estimate became known.

‘This highlights the need for someone in the room, someone who is a politician, who has got ultimate responsibility and needs to be held to account for the spend of taxpayers’ money,’ said Deputy Dudley-Owen.

‘Had someone been in the room, to understand that detail, then there could have been challenge or questions asked at the time, within that space.’

Hours before the hearing, HSC announced that it had asked new vice-president Deputy Marc Leadbeater and recently-elected member Deputy Gavin St Pier to take a more hands-on role overseeing the redevelopment of the hospital, but Deputy Brouard rejected suggestions that his committee had been complacent.

‘There was ample opportunity for staff to advise us whether the figures were right or wrong,’ he said.

‘We pay our professionals substantial sums of money to do a job. We can’t do every single job. I have to rely, and so does our committee, on the civil service.

‘We have the people who were on the project team in the room with us. There was nothing else we could have done. Someone chose not to reveal the information.’