Minister praised 999 chiefs before girl died

Tom Sackville, the health minister, congratulated a health authority on its running of the London Ambulance Service less than three months before the death of an 11-year-old girl who waited almost an hour for an ambulance,it emerged yesterday.

Nasima Begum died in June last year when the South West Thames Regional Health Authority, which no longer exists, was running the service. A report to be published today blames the authority for taking "little action" to look at the broader context of the service after a 1993 inquiry into the collapse of a computer-aided despatch system. Had that happened, the report says, "a significant number of the deficiencies identified in this report would have been rectified earlier."

But Labour yesterday accused health ministers of using the authority as "a scapegoat" to evade their responsiblity when it emreged that Mr Sackville had written to Marian Hicks, the authority's chairman, in March last year to thank her "for the manner inwhich the RHA has carried out its management responsibility". He congratulated management and staff on "working together to overcome problems that have beset the service". The Department of Health has confirmed the letter followed one of the progress reports to ministers that Virginia Bottomley, the Health Secretary, said she would be seeking after a previous inquiry.

Nick Raynsford, Labour's London spokesman, said: "Ministers cannot have it both ways. If the RHA deserved congratulation in March 1994 it cannot now be made a scapegoat."

It was quite clear, he said, that ministers were "closely involved with and supportive of the actions of the South West Thames region, right up to the point when it was taken over by the South Thames Regional Health Authority in April 1994." It might be "politically expedient" to blame an organisation which no longer existed, but: "Mrs Bottomley and her colleagues cannot evade responsibility in this way."

The Department of Health rejected the charge, saying it was proper for Mr Sackville to congratulate the authority when 72 per cent of ambulances reached 999 calls within 14 minutes.

Phil Thompson, the London region spokesman for the Unison, the public service union, said: "Ministers seem to be blaming everyone except themselves. If the final report is different from the version in the Independent we will have grounds for believing that Mrs Bottomley has tampered with it."