SCOTTISH Labour has tabled a Holyrood motion calling for ministers to release all documents and communications relating to the hospital infections scandal.

Infections at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital between 2016 and 2018 have been linked to the deaths of six cancer patients, two of them children, sparking the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry and a police investigation.

In its closing submissions to the inquiry, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde admitted a probable link with dirty water at the site, and submitted that there had been “pressure” to open the facility on time in 2015.

Now, Anas Sarwar has tabled a Holyrood motion to force all documents and communications to be released.

“Families seeking answers have been blocked at every turn by powerful people trying to protect themselves — and whistleblowers have been intimidated and bullied for doing the right thing,” he said. 

“The culture of secrecy and cover-up must end. 

“John Swinney has failed to come clean about what the SNP government knew, when it knew it, and what role it played in the premature opening of this hospital. 

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant. John Swinney and his ministers must publish and preserve all their communications from that time, so we can establish once and for all whether it was negligence or criminal incompetence that got us here.”

SNP Health Secretary Neil Gray said: “The government brought forward the public inquiry so that families — some of whom I have met, and to whom I pay tribute for their work and their diligence following the trauma that they have undoubtedly experienced — can get answers to the questions that they are posing.

“It is right that Lord Brodie now be given the space to consider all the evidence.”