10.07.12
Griffiths urged to resign over hospital reform report
Conservatives have attacked the independence of an academic report supporting hospital service reform, after emails were found between the author and Welsh Government officials.
The author was pressured to support amendments that ministers wanted to improve the case for change, Conservative AMs argue, with some calling for the health minister Lesley Griffiths to resign if she knew about the contact.
Government ministers and the author, Professor Marcus Longley of the Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care, insist the report was impartial.
In an email, NHS Wales medical director DrChrisJones asked Prof Longley to make his report “more positive if possible i.e. describing a persuasive vision of how things could be better”, it was revealed.Conservative shadow health minister Darren Millar told BBC Radio Wales: “We need to understand if the minister knew about how this report was being compiled.
“If she knew about the pressure that her officials were putting on Marcus Longley to produce a report which supported the changes which the minister wanted to make, then she has to go I'm afraid. It calls into question her integrity and her ability as a minister.”
When the report was published,Griffithstold AMs: “This report constitutes strong evidence from a clinical perspective – not a political one.”
And Prof Longley said: “The Case for Change document is an entirely independent piece of work carried out by myself in partnership with NHS Confederation Wales.”
He said that any correspondence with ministers was to source information of data required to compile the report and added: “The report makes a strong and valid case for change in the way our NHS operates and was compiled without bias or influence.”
Prof Longley spoke in detail to NHE about the report for our May/June 2012 edition: visit www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/Interviews/the-case-for-change-in-wales
Health professionals can subscribe to NHE for free at: www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/Subscribe
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Image courtesy The National Assembly for Wales