On 11 February 2021 the Department of Health and Social Care published a Blueprint for NHS and social care reform following pandemic

Ian Smith, Radix Fellow and former Chair of King’s College Hospital NHS Trust responds to the paper:

“No one is going to argue against better integration of health and social care, but one has to wonder whether these proposals are actually about taking powers to the centre, at the expense of local government and primary health providers, whose knowledge of their patients and local circumstances has proved invaluable in tackling the pandemic. 

“More generally, to be announcing such major restructuring in the midst of a pandemic before we have time to investigate and analyse the Government’s handling is at best jumping the gun and, at worst, bonkers.

“One of the major challenges in the NHS is insufficient resourcing of capacity, clinicians and competent local management. The government’s proposals barely mention this crucial issue, and yet-another-top-down-reorganisation is going to waste valuable resources and distract attention from the urgent task of focussing effort on covid and non-covid patient need.”