UUP leader Mike Nesbitt repeats call for health minister to resign

Mike Nesbitt said the minister had caused unnecessary stress to elderly residents

Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Mike Nesbitt has repeated his call for the health minister to resign over the handling of NHS care home closures.

It follows a U-turn by Edwin Poots, when he told health trusts to drop their plans to shut all their homes.

Mr Poots said the closure policy had not changed but he had intervened to change the way it would be implemented.

However, Mr Nesbitt said the minister's intervention was not enough to reassure elderly people and he should step down.

No guarantees

Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme, the UUP leader said: "Although he says he's fixed the implementation I don't believe he's gone far enough.

"No current resident has been given a guarantee that, medical advice and the rest permitting, they will not be forced out of their home," Mr Nesbitt said.

"I think given the unnecessary stress he's caused, that is the least he owes those people and their families."

As part of the Transforming Your Care policy, 50% of NHS residential care homes in Northern Ireland were due to close within five years, but last week the northern, southern and western health trusts announced plans to close all of their residential homes.

On Friday, after days of controversy over the closure plans, Mr Poots said it was "unacceptable" that older people were suffering distress over the proposals.

The minister withdrew all power to implement the policy from the trusts and said that the process would be centralised at a regional level.

On Friday morning, Mr Nesbitt told the BBC's Nolan Show that if he was the health minister, he would have resigned.

In response, a spokesman for Mr Poots' DUP party said Mr Nesbitt's leadership of the UUP had been "littered with disasters" and he should "put his own house in order".