Human body parts and blood from Scotland’s hospitals were stored unlawfully at a depot in Scottish health secretary Neil Gray’s constituency, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Trucks and containers used to store surgically removed organs, tumours and dressings soaked in body fluids, have been held at a site in Shotts, Lanarkshire – in contravention of environmental regulations.
The lorries have been stationed at the Hassockrigg Ecopark, situated just ten miles from Mr Gray’s constituency office, because Scotland no longer has the equipment to process the most hazardous clinical waste.
As a result, it has to be taken hundreds of miles to England and Wales by NHS Scotland contractor Tradebe Healthcare to be incinerated alongside the rest of the UK’s hospital waste.
Since 2019, the company’s trucks are estimated to have made around one million miles worth of journeys south of the border carrying Scotland’s body parts, tumours and surgical offcuts – the equivalent to 40 trips around the world.
Now, owing to a backlog of waste needing to be incinerated at Tradebe Healthcare’s English and Welsh plants, the MoS can reveal the facility, first opened by the Princess Royal, had been used as an emergency storage site – despite the company not having a licence to use it in such a way.
It is the same site that six years ago was at the centre of a national emergency, even sparking a COBRA meeting, after it was revealed hundreds of tons of rotting human waste had been abandoned there.
Last night, experts said the revelations proved that Scotland’s waste industry was on the brink of collapse.
Veteran waste management chief David Wightwick, who was called in by UK Government ministers to help clean up the Shotts site after it was left abandoned in 2018, said: ‘The NHS is heading towards another clinical waste catastrophe as we last witnessed in 2018.
‘It was not appropriate for clinical waste to be kept at Shotts, even in the car park, as another company held the licences to do that.
‘Meanwhile, highly hazardous clinical waste is being ferried hundreds of miles down to England and Wales to be disposed of because Scotland no longer has the capacity to dispose of our own ‘yellow bag’ waste.
‘The system is teetering on the edge, there is simply no resilience in Scotland if something goes wrong. I fear we are headed towards another disaster.’
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and health spokeswoman, added: ‘The idea that clinical waste, including Scots’ body parts, may have been kept in the same notorious site where rats ran riot amid human remains six years ago is an affront to patient dignity.
‘Lessons should have been learned after the scandal in 2018.
‘This SNP government must act urgently to get to the bottom of this activity before the horrific scenes of 2018 are repeated.’
The crisis surrounding Scotland’s clinical waste management first came to a head in 2018 when waste disposal company Healthcare Environmental Services Ltd (HES), which was based out of the Shotts plant and incinerated the majority of Scotland’s waste, went into administration, leaving debris piled up.
Hundreds of tons of human and animal surgical waste had been left to rot in unrefrigerated conditions for around a year, insiders claim, prompting rat and ant infestations as well as a noxious and foul smell.
Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock was so concerned he called a COBRA meeting to address the situation, while NHS England, which also used HES, told hospitals to start holding a backlog of waste.
In 2019, David Wightwick and his team were hauled in on behalf of HES liquidators to clear the debris, and were forced to ship the waste to a plant in Sweden at the cost of almost £2million.
Insiders who helped with the clear up describe being hit by a foul smell, as they navigated through shipping container sized freezers which had been turned off for around 12 months, holding limbs and human body parts.
A decomposing penguin from Edinburgh Zoo was also found, as maggots feasted on its slimy remains.
That same year, NHS Scotland employed Tradebe Healthcare – a Spanish firm – to take over all 14 Scottish health boards’ clinical waste disposal – even though the firm had been embroiled in a series of environmental scandals.
Despite the NHS instructing Tradebe five years ago, it has still failed to install a ‘High Temperature Incineration’ (HTI) facility that is able to dispose of Scotland’s most dangerous waste – yellow bag waste – north of the border.
It means the company must move all highly hazardous waste, collected from every hospital in Scotland – some of which do not have any of their own waste storage capacity – to other plants including in Swindon, England, and Wrexham in Wales.
Waste experts say that it is likely around 25,000 tons have been transported by Tradebe during the lifetime of its contract, requiring around 2,500 lorry journeys, or around one million miles of travel.
In leaked NHS documents, the health service has admitted that continuing to move waste down to England and Wales in this way does ‘not align with the Scottish Government Sustainability Strategy and Net Zero targets’.
Now, owing to waits for specialist incineration machines south of the border, an MoS investigation has found Tradebe has unlawfully used the old Shotts site as a holding bay for hazardous waste.
Although the NHS bought the out-of-use Hassockrigg Ecopark in 2023 for around £5million, in order to create ‘resilience’ if something went wrong in the disposal chain, it currently does not hold the relevant licences to keep waste there, and nor does Tradebe.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) require companies to have an expert on site holding a Certificate of Technical Competence or a Technically Competent Manager in order to comply with environment laws, but up until September 18, the person who held both of these certifications no longer works there.
Despite that, trucks and shipping containers of waste have been held in the car park of the site since early last year.
The NHS and Tradebe said that SEPA had given them a ‘temporary allowance’ to use the ecopark to station their vehicles before driving them onto England and Wales, however a SEPA spokesman said that although they were given temporary permission to use it from March 2023, the allowance was withdrawn in November 2023.
The regulator confirmed the contractor had been using the site from November 2023 until July 16, 2024 without the proper licence, however it claimed this was due to a breakdown in communication.
The spokesman said: “In March 2023…SEPA confirmed an interim enforcement position to Tradebe to allow the company to use the site for the storage and transfer of waste, along with limited treatment of waste to maintain the heat treatment units at operational readiness level, and to carry out monthly efficacy testing as required.’
They went on to say that ‘the SEPA enforcement position was deemed withdrawn’ in November 2023, however: ‘On review, it has become evident that the effect of withdrawing the transfer application was not clearly communicated to Tradebe, who continued to operate in compliance with the previous position’.
They added: ‘We accept that Tradebe and NHS National Services Scotland were operating under the reasonable expectation that there was no change to the enforcement position issued in March 2023,’ and said: ‘SEPA remain satisfied with the actions of Tradebe and the appropriate and responsible management of healthcare waste in Scotland.’
Gordon Beattie, Director of National Procurement, NHS National Services Scotland, said, ‘The safe disposal of clinical waste is paramount to protecting critical patient services and ensuring the continued safe operations of Scotland’s health and care services.
‘Over 85 per cent of Scotland’s clinical waste is processed in Scotland by our contractor. We are confident our clinical waste contract requires our supplier to adhere to regulatory requirements as part of their contract.
‘These requirements include regular updates on how clinical waste services are being provided and we remain confident that Scotland’s clinical waste processing and transfer is being adhered to in line with Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) requirements, ensuring a good level of service.’
Tradebe said that it ‘did not act illegally’ and added that SEPA ‘are satisfied with the actions of Tradebe and the appropriate and responsible management of healthcare waste in Scotland’.
A spokeswoman added: ‘We continued to provide reports during that period to SEPA in accordance with our obligations. We therefore did not act illegally.’