26.09.2025 12:41
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Doctors in Cheshire and Merseyside say they will be “left with no option but to take a stand” if leaders do not reverse plans to cut rates for extra-contractual work.
BMA claims the approach has had a “detrimental impact” on patients and staff, amid similar moves elsewhere.
w/ Caitlin Tilley.
Mark Bailie*, NHSE non-executive director, not Mark Cubbon.
Cubbon: “[...] It is the Churchill quote: ‘If I had more time, I would write you a shorter letter’.
“I think you probably need a shorter letter.”
Mark Cubbon, NHSE’s lead for elective care, cancer and diagnostics, said: “The thinking is amazing. The next task is how you synthesise it down to something that is repeatably consumable at every single level [...]”
Dr Dash: “I had a bit of a personal problem with some of the language in here. This one on self-effectiveness [says], ‘keep safe’.
“What does that mean? Does that I mean I walk slowly down the corridor?”
A draft of the NHS’s first management leadership framework has too much “fuzzy language” and should be simplified,
NHS England's board has said.
Chair Dr Penny Dash told officials to “tighten up” it up and include a clearer measurement of performance.
www.hsj.co.uk/workforce/fu...
#Exc: A long-awaited review into “unjust and unfair” pay disparities between white and minority ethnic staff in the NHS has been launched, @hsj.co.uk can reveal.
The @nhs-rho.bsky.social has commissioned the first-ever review into it with @uniofsurrey.bsky.social.
www.hsj.co.uk/workforce/ex...
New: Dr Navina Evans, NHS England’s chief workforce, training and education officer, is leaving this summer.
@hsj.co.uk story up soon.
The huge & very useful annual survey of NHS staff has sadly got lost over the past 7 frenzied days
luckily @kituno.bsky.social has unpicked one of the most important themes here in the first of a NEW MONTHLY WORKFORCE BRIEFING www.hsj.co.uk/expert-brief...
Reform delayed by Treasury could have stopped Letby, says Jeremy Hunt
A #patientsafety reform whose introduction was delayed due to concerns about cost and staffing in the Treasury and NHS could have detected Lucy Letby’s murders earlier, Jeremy Hunt has suggested.
@kituno.bsky.social's report on @hsj.co.uk here >> www.hsj.co.uk/policy-and-r...
And with that, Hunt has concluded giving evidence.
Hunt says implementing the medical examiners recommendation was unrelated to the Letby conviction.
He said he implemented it had not been done for some time and Treasury officials were worried about its costs. Guesstimates it cost around £40m per year.
Hunt: “That kind of thing tends to get crowded out because they are being kept on such a short leash by their managers in NHS England. I do think that is culturally very bad for the NHS.”
Hunt: “It means they are rushed off their feet. They’re worried about the numbers that they’re going to be giving to NHS England next month.”
Hunt: “They spend a lot of their time trying to tick boxes to show that they’ve been hitting a particular target in this department or a particular target in that department.“
Hunt: “If you look at what is different about the way the NHS is run [compared to] nearly every other healthcare system in the world, it’s that the CEO of a hospital will be assessed against 100 targets every year.”
Hunt: “There were some big problems in the structure of the NHS that made it difficult to develop a constructive culture that I felt we needed. I think there are too many targets.”
Hunt: “If a doctor makes a mistake, they are worried that if they are open it, they’ll lose their job.
“It’s easier for a hospital to fire a doctor and say, ‘I’m very sorry about what happened, but we had a rotten apple and we got rid of him or her,’ than to change working practice on the ground.”
Hunt suggests that inquiry judges should produce a progress report two years on from initial recommendations.
“That might be a way to jolt the system to implement stuff that’s been put in the long grass. I don’t think [trusts] could pull the wool over the eyes of any judge.”
Hunt: “There are just so many recommendations now that things just get forgotten or lost.”
Hunt: “They might send an email around to everyone and say: ‘You need to be aware of the risk of malicious harm in your work and doing it’.
Hunt: “I saw a recommendation [paraphrasing] to ‘raise awareness of the possibility of malicious harm’.
“In reality, that is actually a useless recommendation if you pump it out to 250 trusts.”
Hunt: “If a baby died because something went wrong in a hospital in Blackpool, you would hope things would change in a maternity unit in Cornwall, so the same thing couldn’t happen.”
Hunt: “What we need is something at the centre that not just catalogues these inquiries, but prioritises them. Perhaps with a traffic light system [...]”
Hunt: “I think the medical examiner system, when it works well, is incredibly important to a healthcare system.”
Hunt: “[It was] something that I look at as being one of the things that we took too long to implement.
“It came across my desk again in 2023 as something that required additional funding, which the NHS were not willing to fund. I made it happen as Chancellor.”
