NHS managers will be blocked from running a merry-go-round of cushy six-figure jobs without getting grilled when things go wrong, the Health Secretary has vowed.
Wes Streeting said “rotten apples” will be denied easy routes into new jobs.
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He said he will put an end to failing senior executives being able to quit and land new jobs elsewhere without consequences.
It came as he unveiled a blitz on bad bosses at the NHS Providers conference in Liverpool and warned the health service “is on borrowed time”.
The Health Secretary said: “The guilty secret of the NHS is that there are very senior managers who are paid on average £145,000 per year who are managed out, given a pay-off in one trust and then reincarnate at another trust.
“Those rotten apples are unacceptable and give the profession a bad name so we’ve got to manage them out.”
We need more doers and fewer checkers
Wes Streeting
In one extreme example, chief executives at the Countess of Chester, where killer nurse Lucy Letby committed her crimes, quit their jobs and went to work elsewhere.
Streeting this week laid out a raft of reforms to NHS management promising there would be “no more rewards for failure”.
They include ranking hospital performance in a league table and blocking pay rises for bad bosses or even sacking them.
The Government will set up a new College of Executive and Clinical Leadership to officially train new chiefs.
Streeting said: “We need more doers and fewer checkers.
“The NHS is living on borrowed time and if a Labour Government can’t improve the NHS, then it simply won’t survive.
“The Prime Minister pledged the biggest reimagining of the NHS and it falls upon all our shoulders to deliver this.”
TIMELINE OF THE NHS WAITING LIST
THE NHS waiting list in England has become a political flashpoint as it has ballooned in recent years, more than doubling in a decade.
The statistics for England count the number of procedures, such as operations and non-surgical treatments, that are due to patients.
The procedures are known as elective treatment because they are planned and not emergencies. Many are routine ops such as for hip or knee replacements, cataracts or kidney stones, but the numbers also include some cancer treatments.
This is how the wait list has changed over time:
August 2007: 4.19million – The first entry in current records.
December 2009: 2.32million – The smallest waiting list on modern record.
April 2013: 2.75million – The Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition restructures the NHS. Current chancellor Jeremy Hunt was Health Secretary.
April 2016: 3.79million – Junior doctors go on strike for the first time in 40 years. Theresa May is elected Prime Minister.
February 2020: 4.57million – The final month before the UK’s first Covid lockdown in March 2020.
July 2021: 5.61million – The end of all legal Covid restrictions in the UK.
January 2023: 7.21million – New Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledges to reduce waiting lists within a year, effectively April 2024.
September 2023: 7.77million – The highest figure on record comes during a year hit with strikes by junior doctors, consultants, nurses and ambulance workers.
February 2024: 7.54million – Ministers admit the pledge to cut the backlog has failed.
August 2024: 7.64million – List continues to rise under Keir Starmer’s new Labour Government.
