Former Health Secretary Alan Milburn To Help Government Fix Health And Care - But Some Have Doubts
11th November 2024
Alan Milburn joins the Department of Health and Social Care's board to support the government's ambitious plans for reform.
Alan Milburn has been appointed Lead Non-Executive Member to the board of the Department of Health and Social Care.
Mr Milburn brings experience at the highest levels to help transform the health and care system
This government is determined to work with experts who can provide the best advice to help rebuild an NHS fit for the future
Alan Milburn has been appointed Lead Non-Executive Member to the board of the Department of Health and Social Care.
The former Health Secretary has a proven track record of reducing waiting lists and improving satisfaction in the NHS.
The NHS is broken and it is the mission of this government to fix it and make the health service fit for the future. As part of this national mission, experts are being brought in to help develop policy, and NHS staff and patients have been invited to share their experience and ideas to change the NHS at Change.NHS.gov.uk.
Members of the department board provide independent advice and expertise to inform the department's strategy, performance and governance and the Lead Non-Executive Member provides additional support to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in his role as Chair of the board.
As a former Secretary of State, Alan brings experience at the highest levels of helping transform the health and care system.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said:
As Secretary of State, Alan made the reforms which helped deliver the shortest waiting times and highest patient satisfaction in the history of the NHS.
This government has inherited a broken health service with some of the longest waiting times and lowest patient satisfaction in history. I am delighted to welcome Alan to the department board, where he will offer advice on turning the NHS around once again.
His unique expertise and experience will be invaluable and he has an outstanding track record of delivering better care for patients.
Lead Non-Executive Director Alan Milburn said:
I am delighted to be appointed to this role.
Having spent three decades working in health policy, I have never seen the NHS in a worse state. Big reforms will be needed to make it fit for the future.
I am confident this government has the right plans in place to transform the health service and the health of the nation. I'm looking forward to working with them to achieve that mission.
Due to the requirements of the role and the unique expertise and experience Alan Milburn brings, he was appointed directly by the Secretary of State on following consultation with the Commissioner for Public Appointments, and in compliance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.
The Department of Health and Social Care would like to thank Samantha Jones for all her work and support as non-executive director since February 2023.
In line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments, political activity is not a bar to appointment but political activity during the last five years should be declared. Alan Milburn is a member of the Labour Party.
Government non-executives provide advice and bring an external perspective to the business of government departments by sitting on departmental boards. They do not have decision-making powers.
Alan Milburn was Labour MP for Darlington from 1992 to 2010. He was a health minister from 1997 to 1998 and became the Secretary of State for Health between 1999 and 2003.
More about Alan Milburn at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Milburn
But Roy Lilley has doubts
I've never really understood why Alan Milburn is regarded by some as the great doyen of everything NHS.
For me, he's less St Saviour and more Jumping-Jack-Flash.
He was secretary of state for health when we were driving a Vauxhall Vectra and Glenn Hoddle was England football manager.
Over last weekend he joined in with the... ‘we can't keep giving the NHS more money', schtick.
When in office, he saddled the NHS with billions of PFI debt and almost succeeded in turning FT hospital into not for profit businesses.
He's conveniently forgotten he was given ‘more money'... something which he now has the brass-neck to deride.
Blair gave it to him, shedloads, a whopping increase... and guess what... NHS performance perked-up and waiting-list come down.
He introduced a labyrinth of competitive tendering to underpin the concept of patient-choice. It turned into gold-plated bureaucracy, cost a fortune and delivered no discernible improvement in quality.
And, we learned an expensive truth, patients are not that keen to travel for treatment and if they do, it’s principally to where waiting lists are shorter… and we all know they’re long, everywhere.
Milburn tried to decentralise decision making with dinky primary care groups, some no bigger than a bridge-club. It took forever to transition them into something big enough to do enough. The up-shot was to reinforce inconsistent service-levels across regions.
The Milburn years… the muddle years with targets that missed the point and morale that plummeted.
Now, he’s back. Streeting is not old enough to have suffered Milburn’s jumble-sale of initiatives, neither to understand the difference between talking a good game and actually playing the game… and winning.
For some bonkers reason Silly Boy has appointed Milburn to the largely superfluous Department of Health Board but it does give Milburn license to tell us how stupid we all are.
Streeting, who himself asked for more money in the recent budget (please try and ignore the irony) squeezed £23bn out of the Treasury.
The NHS’s underlying financial pressures mean that a large portion of the £23bn will go towards closing the current funding-gap, covering the increase in staff salaries, managing escalating day-to-day costs and work flowing through the system.
Streeting’s talk of reform is a fog of meaninglessness.
Get run over by a bus; gangster or granny, millionaire or malingerer the NHS will pick-you-up, fix-you-up and get you up on your feet again. Which bit of that do you want to reform?
Talk is cheap.
What the NHS is in desperate need of is, modernisation.
Which is not cheap.
New IT, machine-learned diagnostic support, diagnostic equipment, IT interfaces that patients can use as easily as FaceTime, demand forecasting, admin systems that don’t create more admin and buildings that are safe and easy to maintain.
Labour was elected to reduce NHS waiting-lists. Streeting knows he can’t. Hence the distraction of consultations and ‘reform’.
No discussion required. Streeting’s life is full of ‘gets’;
Get an ambulance at least as quick as a Deliveroo pizza.
Get to talk to a doctor, not a pretend doctor.
Get a diagnostic as fast as an MOT.
Get fixed-up with an appointment at least as quick as you can book a cut-and-highlights.
Get people back to work and on with their lives.
That’s what Streeting has to get on with. Get delivered. Get right, first time, all the time, but…
… we all know he won’t until he gets social care sorted out…
… vulnerable older people are disproportionately the highest cost and highest users of health and care systems. They are likely to have the longest length of stay and be the trickiest to discharge safely.
Look after them better and they’ll need less care and that means more domiciliary support and fixing social care…
... and…
…children, the second highest users, especially the under-fives... for preventive care, immunisations, treatment of common childhood illnesses, respiratory infections, injuries, fevers, acute illnesses, help for mums and dads and accidents…
… giving them a ‘Sure-Start’ will reduce demand.
Streeting has to learn he cannot define himself through other people. Wrap himself in consultation and committees. Hide behind has-beens.
He must step forward...
… NHS people have to know what he stands for, what he wants, how and when.
Streeting is not a natural leader. He uses authority instead of insight. The uses the power of his office, instead of capturing the power of his people.
This week, his upcoming speech must define him. Find a maturity that is missing. Create clarity out of his confusion. Blend reality with optimism. Hope, underpinned with helpfulness.
We’ll find out if he’s any ideas of his own. Any imagination.
We’ll find out what he’s made of.
Roy Lilley - https://ihm.org.uk/roy-lilley-nhsmanagers/
