04.03.13
Nicholson ‘protected by civil servants’ from Francis criticism
Professor Sir Brian Jarman has suggested in a new interview that civil servants “neutered” the Francis report to protect Sir David Nicholson from the fall-out over the scandal at Mid Staffordshire, which is set to go into administration.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Sir Brian, an international authority on hospital performance, said: “You have to remember that the final version of these inquiries are written up by Department of Health officials. They neutered it…I think it probably has the effect of protecting [Nicholson].”
NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson, who headed the SHA overseeing Stafford hospital at the time of the scandal, faces MPs on the health select committee tomorrow. He has come under sustained pressure to resign from some MPs, newspapers and campaigners.
Members of Cure the NHS protested outside the meeting last week of the NHS Commissioning Board in Manchester, holding signs saying ‘The man with no shame’ and ‘Too many deaths, no accountability’.
But Nicholson told the meeting: “What you need to do is absorb the criticisms and understand it in a deep way and do something about it. We need to put the entire weight of the NHS, both the patients and the people working in it, to shift that culture in the right way.”
Monitor has decided “in principle” that Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust should be placed into administration, which means it could face being dissolved and having its services taken on by someone else. It is now consulting to start that process officially.
Monitor chief executive David Bennett said the administrators’ priority will be “to reorganise services in a way which is clinically robust and sustainable” and “to make sure that patients can continue to access the services that they need”.
Once the administrator is appointed they will have 150 days to come up with proposals for the future of the trust.
(Photo shows Julie Bailey, founder of Cure the NHS, with protesters outside the NHS Commissioning Board meeting in Manchester. Image: Martin Rickett/PA Wire.)
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