Mrs White said “We fought a long and hard campaign to save the Sick Kids and its link to the Queen Mother’s Maternity on site at Yorkhill. However the Health Minister flew in the face of opinion from staff, parents, and the public and announced its closure. But he promised a new hospital with at least equal facilities, indeed he said that the new facility would be world-class. Now we find that the number of beds will be fewer than at present and we are left to wonder how many other cost-saving exercises are waiting in the wings.

Already Glasgow is to face a reduction of A+E’s from five to only two and now the Health Board are playing the numbers game again by announcing a cut in beds at the new Sick Kids even before a consultation has been carried out.

The paediatric consultants at Yorkhill say that the numbers of beds mustn’t be cut and that in their clinical judgement even the £100million announced already won’t deliver a facility to equal what we already have at Yorkhill. I am calling on Andy Kerr to come clean on whether this new Sick Kids is just another example of Labour putting lives at risk in order to save money.”