Press release: NHS Confederation responds to the LGA speech on powers to appoint and dismiss police and NHS chiefs
11 Dec 2007
Responding to comments by Sir Simon Milton calling for council leaders to get the power to appoint and dismiss local NHS chief executives and police commanders, Nigel Edwards, Director of Policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents 95% of NHS Organisations said:
"There is little evidence of any public appetite for changing the accountability mechanisms in the NHS. There is however evidence that the public have more faith in local clinicians than in their local councillors.
"In a MORI survey carried out for the NHS Confederation, respondents were asked who should make decisions about which medicines or treatments are funded by the local NHS. Seventy per cent believed that clinicians working in the local NHS should do so, with 33 per cent favouring patient representatives and 23 per cent local NHS managers. Only 9 per cent believed that decisions should be made by MPs and 6 per cent by local councillors.
"Health services are already accountable to local government through overview and scrutiny committees. We should focus on improving those structures to make them work more effectively.
"There are also many existing ways of involving patients and the public in services, such as the model of membership being led by the Foundation Trusts.
"There is now cross-party consensus that structural change is not the answer. The very last thing that patients need is for the NHS to be re-organised again, especially following concrete evidence of the damage that reorganisations can do to services."
ENDS
Notes for editors
1. The NHS Confederation represents more than 95% of the organisations that make up the NHS. Its members include the majority of NHS acute trusts, ambulance trusts, foundation trusts, mental health trusts, primary care trusts, special health authorities and strategic health authorities in England; trusts and local health boards in Wales; and health and social service trusts and boards in Northern Ireland.
Contact details
Contact Niall Smith 020 7074 3304 or 07767 770309, Ruth Kennedy 020 7074 3312 or 07884 47 3086, or Ruby Casey-Knight 020 7074 3306 or 07881 957305. For out of hours media enquiries, please call the Duty Press Officer on 07880 500726.
Back to media centre
