Daily Insight: ‘Useless, overpaid and appallingly run’

A Conservative MP has said the NHS has “far too many overpaid and utterly useless senior managers”, who are to blame for the health service being “appallingly run”.

Philip Davies, MP for Shipley in Yorkshire, has insisted that what he described as the “shambles” in the NHS is not the fault of the government, but of senior managers “who wouldn’t be able to get a similar job in the private sector”.

He added the NHS should “[concentrate] on patient care rather than spending millions on politically correct equality, diversity and inclusion posts and training.”

His claims, in an email to an author and journalist which was then posted on Twitter, come despite analysis showing the NHS managers making up just 2 per cent of the workforce, compared with 9.5 per cent of the UK workforce as a whole.

“It is time people looked to the vast number of senior managers and told them to up their game rather than giving them a free pass and just blaming the government,” he said.

Fast money

The national discharge scheme that funded short-term care placements early in the pandemic is effectively being reintroduced – but national healthcare leaders have told HSJ it must be dished out within 10 days if it’s to have a meaningful impact.

They said the government has “a week to 10 days” to distribute the £200m it is committing to speed up hospital discharge if the initiative is to have a worthwhile effect on reducing the 13,000 patients who are medically fit to leave hospital.

Health and social care secretary Steve Barclay yesterday announced the return of the discharge scheme, which comes on top of the £500m “adult social care discharge fund” announced in September. The latest allocation would “fund maximum stays of up to four weeks per patient until the end of March”.

However, it took many weeks to distribute the first £200m of the ASCDF, and the final £300m is only now being given to local organisations . 

One national NHS leader told HSJ: “If this announcement is to be anything more than politically-driven theatre and have an impact before the start of spring, then the money needs to be in place in the next week to 10 days.”

NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor said: “We await the full details of the proposed hospital discharge fund with interest. Given the ongoing delay in distributing the delayed discharge fund announced last autumn any funds will need to be rapidly deployed.”