Exclusive:Grieving QEUH family accuses Fiona McQueen of 'rubbing salt in our open wound' after Disneyland comments

Fiona McQueen resigned from the police authority after The Scotsman exclusively revealed she suggested grieving families at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) should be offered a trip to Disneyland.

The SPA said Ms McQueen has stepped down due to personal and family reasons.

Ms McQueen,the Scottish Government’s former chief nursing officer, suggested the health board offer grieving families £50,000 or a “trip to Disneyland” in remarks made to whistleblowers at the QEUH.

Carolanne Baxter, whose baby son William died at the QEUH in July 2019, has hit out at Ms Queen’s comments and stressed that “Sunday is another Mother’s Day without my precious baby”.

Speaking to The Scotsman, Ms Baxter said she would “assume” Ms McQueen has “never experienced trauma or heartache like me and my family”.

READ MORE: Exclusive: Sturgeon’s nursing chief suggested QEUH families should be offered “trip to Disneyland”

She added that “to suggest a trip to Disneyland or £50,000” be given to her and other victims’ families, and “for us to watch other people with their kids when we would only have been there because my son died in the dirty hospital” is “like rubbing salt in an open wound”.

Ms Baxter said: “It would be absolute torture. It will not fix this feeling or fill the massive hole left in our lives.

“Would it not have been better to suggest that this spare money could have gone on cleaning the hospital and fixing the water and ventilation systems, and maybe my son would still be here.”

She added: “This comment was made in December of 2019 so clearly they already knew, while my son was ill, there was serious issues in the hospital.

“Sunday is another mother's day without my precious baby.”

Dr Christine Peters, a consultant microbiologist at the QEUH who was an infection control doctor when the facility opened, revealed the remarks were made at a meeting with Ms McQueen in December 2019, weeks after the full picture of infections emerged at the Glasgow hospital.

Ms Peters and fellow whistleblower, Dr Penelope Redding, held talks with Ms McQueen at a Scottish Government building in Edinburgh.

In a written statement to the hospitals inquiry, Ms Peters said: “At one point she (McQueen) said that she couldn’t understand ‘why GGC had not just offered the families 50 grand which is a trip to Disneyland, rather than deny that there had been harm caused’.

Scottish Labour deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, said: “Families affected by the QEUH scandal were put through hell and it is a scandal a Scottish government official tried to buy them off.

“Fiona McQueen’s resignation doesn’t change a thing – John Swinney and the SNP still have serious questions to answer about this shameful episode.

“Families deserve to know the truth about why the hospital was opened before it was safe, who participated in the cover-up that followed and whether the hospital is safe now.”

In announcing her resignation, Ms McQueen said: “It has been a privilege to serve on the Scottish Police Authority and to work alongside dedicated board colleagues and the leadership teams across policing in Scotland."