[WATCH] Chris Fearne puts hospitals deal on notice

Chris Fearne puts hospitals deal on notice

Chris Fearne appears to have put the Steward hospitals deal on notice in a speech during which he urged the government to have the courage to fix past mistakes.

Without making any specific reference, Fearne said the first challenge the Labour Party faced was admitting where it did wrong and take the decisions to fix the problems.

“There were things we did wrong, or things that did not go as planned. We have to admit this and arrange things,” he told PL delegates at Sunday’s extraordinary general conference.

Fearne continued: “It is not easy to do so when these include projects you started with your colleagues but we have to be courageous and understand that where things did not work out, we should draw a line and change direction or stop projects.”

The Health Minister was careful not to mention individual projects by name but the words ‘projects you started with your colleagues’ could be interpreted as a reference to the hospitals deal.

He later added that government should be courageous enough to “stop projects, irrespective of how big they are”.

Prime Minister Robert Abela has appointed an evaluation committee of experts to analyse the hospitals deal and has not excluded stopping it outright.

However, Fearne’s comments yesterday appear to be rooting for the contract’s termination.

Fearne was health parliamentary secretary under Konrad Mizzi when the government transferred three public hospitals to Vitals Global Healthcare, an obscure company with no track record in the health sector.

The deal was handled by Projects Malta, a government agency that answered to Mizzi, and was a key plank during the Muscat administration.

The project that would have seen the construction of a state-of-the-art general hospital in Gozo and the complete refurbishment of St Luke’s and Karin Grech. The deal would have also seen the private company attract medical tourists.

But VGH failed to deliver on the promised €200 million investment while receiving millions from the government that remain unaccounted for.

As health minister, Fearne eventually oversaw the transfer of the concession agreement to Steward Healthcare.

Fearne had described Steward as the “real deal”, given the American company’s healthcare background.

However, Steward is now seeking a renegotiation of the hospitals concession deal, asking for more money from the government.

Unions representing doctors and nurses have called on the government to pull the plug on the hospitals deal, insisting the private companies failed to deliver.

Opposition leader Adrian Delia has also gone to court asking for the contract to be cancelled.