UPDATE NHS CONFEDERATION CONFERENCE


Nicholson pulls no punches


This year’s NHS Confederation Conference tackled the major issues affecting the NHS. Sir David Nicholson took to the stage on day two and set the world to rights. GEORGE CAREY reports


A


s usual there was plenty to take in over the three days of the NHS Confederation Conference last June, with an impressive range of expertise on offer discussing a wide range of topics. But it was NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson who stole the show as he


offered a fascinating insight into life under the coalition and his plans moving forward. In an extraordinarily candid address, Nicholson confessed


he had been incredulous when Lansley first outlined his plans for the structural NHS shake-up now being implemented. He spoke of his fury at ministers’ repeated criticism of public sector management: “I felt angry every time the Government came in, starting to denigrate and criticise public sector leaders – people like ourselves who have spent our whole lives trying to improve public services.” Nicholson told the audience that the NHS reorganisation had


Lansley had addressed the conference the day before and


had clashed with Stephen Dorrell, the Conservative chair of the Commons’s Health Select Committee and himself a former health secretary, over the issue of hospital closures. While Lansley argued that ministers should stand back from debate and decisions over changes to services, which were a local matter, Dorrell called on them to take a lead. Nicholson was in agreement with Dorrell on this issue and


“I felt angry every time the Government came in, starting to denigrate and criticise public sector leaders”


felt like going through a bereavement. He had shared their feelings of denial, anger and depression before moving on to acceptance of the inevitability of the upheaval taking effect next year. On the subject of Lansley informing him of the plans, he said: “My immediate response was that they couldn’t possibly be wanting to do that.”


joined him in citing a speech in 1961 by Enoch Powell, then health minister, in which he proposed the wholesale closure of long-stay mental hospitals. Referring to Powell’s speech, Nicholson said: “In lots of ways, it’s the sort of speech we need our national politicians to make at the moment. It’s being honest with the public about the nature and scale of change that’s required in order to live in a world where


we have great outcomes for patients, universally available, but within the resources that we have.” He urged NHS leaders to have confidence in their ability


to make the new system work, based on what they’d already achieved, saying: “In my 35 years in the NHS, I have never known a time like it. Thank you for your hard work, it’s been genuinely remarkable.”


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