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WHY Government is taking back control of the #NHS. 5 main reasons in my latest @HSJnews article: https://bit.ly/36V0y3w . Managing risk, the manifesto, practicalities with the Act, party management and access to data are all behind the decision #NHSbill
Risk – There has been increasing frustration that the way the Lansley Act works in practice is that Ministers take all the blame when things go wrong, but the NHS the credit for any good news stories. Ministers want a clearer role in the NHS recovery
Prioritisation – Across the Long Term Plan, Conservative manifesto and Covid recovery something has to give. The Conservative manifesto is what the Government wants to point to delivering come 2024 and this direction setting power in the Bill is designed to ensure that
Practicalities – With NHS England morphing into an ever larger entity, the current levers of an annual mandate, the NHS Board and the outcomes frameworks are not strong enough. The directional powers are designed to ensure there is better oversight
Party management – NHS England has felt difficult and remote to backbench parliamentarians. Bringing greater direction setting powers to Ministers including oversight of difficult local reconfigurations of services is designed to address this
Data and information - References to which are littered throughout the leaked document. It is hoped this new power will be a more effective lever at providing the Government with the information about the NHS it requests and needs in order to play an effective oversight role.
The vaccine rollout is a model for how Government would like the future system to work. See my piece for @Policy_Exchange last month on this: https://bit.ly/3aQaM6k #vaccine #vaccinerollout #COVID19
There is of course a big debate to be had about whether any of this is sensible or not. Remember that since Lansley the Conservatives have never lost an election... Bringing more politics back in is a gamble and could see Labour more front foot in their attacks on NHS performance
Also significant implications for how the service will run post April 2022, read @HPIAndyCowper, @Robert_WH_Ede, @Davewwest, @IsabelHardman, @NJ_Timothy, @instituteforgov, @ianbirrell @MBirty @SarahNev @ShaunLintern for some of the best main points this all throws up
