Email dated 21/08/2026

NHS cover-ups and request for update on publicly available Adverse Event Critical Incident Reports

For the personal attention and response of the CEO's of the 14 territorial Scottish Health Boards

Dear Sir/Madam,

You will all recall that we wrote to you last year re access to and public availability of Serious Adverse Event Reviews/Critical Incident Reports carried out by Scottish health boards. (See thread below...!)

This morning on BBC Radio Scotland 'Mornings with Stephen Jardine' programme one of the subjects for public debate was 'cover ups in the NHS'. I was asked to speak on the programme, which I did. Other guests/contributors included; Dr Ian Kennedy (former chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland) ; Dr Andrew Buist (former Chair BMA Scottish GP committee) ; Helen Puttick (Sunday Times) and ex-Scottish health minister Alex Neil. 

They all strongly condemned NHS Scotland for its cover-ups of information, failure to support whistleblowers, manipulation of reports, and placing reputational management and protection above patient care.

Given that the subject of NHS cover ups is still a constant theme in our national news we felt it was time to ask for an update on how your boards/trusts are making information available to the public.

Therefore;

Can you please provide us with links to your board/trust website that direct us to and show/provide details of Serious Adverse Event Reviews/Critical Incident Reports carried out by your board/trust and any learning summaries derived from SAER/CIR's.

Where can we access this information?

Also;

Regarding public provision of public learning from SAER/CIR's, we identified the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board system (https://ukom.no/english/about-the-norwegian-healthcare-investigation-board) as the best current system available internationally to do this.

Since last year what progress has been made by your health board to provide/produce SAER/CIR's in a publicly available accessible format and can you please provide links to copies of these reports?

We trust that major improvements have been made since last year in the public provision of SAER/CIR's and the learning from such incidents and we would like to see the evidence of these improvements.

We look forward to your soonest response.

Yours aye,
Rab Wilson for ASAP-NHS