Responding to the negative comments on NHS managers by Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, at the launch of the NHS People Plan, MiP Chief Executive Jon Restell said:
“Matt Hancock is wrong to conflate bureaucratic processes and management. We need managers. Staff need managers. Patients need managers. Matt Hancock needs managers.
“And we really need good processes in the NHS. Process and regulation are vital to ensure that a system is fair, just and above all accountable, and accountability is a necessary part of a system, not just ‘red tape’. The NHS is paid for with public money and run for the people of the UK, and process allows the people who make choices within the system to be held accountable for those choices.
“It would have been more productive for the Secretary of State to talk about how to free up managers to focus more of their time on supporting staff and service improvement, and to tackle the monumental tasks of resuming services and handling a second wave of Covid-19, rather than wasting their very limited time looking up at him.
“We have seen from this pandemic that having more managers in the right place, working more closely together and with more funding at their disposal, is paying off for staff and patients– and improving service quality.”
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MiP says regulation alone will not improve the NHS culture around raising and acting on concerns, following the findings of the Thirlwall Inquiry into the Lucy Letby case.
TUC Congress has backed a motion calling for an evidence-based and fully resourced plan for NHS management, with unions warning that cutting management capacity risks shifting essential work onto clinical teams.
The Scottish Government has announced plans to radically restructure the NHS, replacing Scotland’s 14 territorial health boards with two new ‘Strategic Health Boards’ covering the west and east of the country.
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