Asleep At The Wheel?


The Private Eye does not allow the country's politicians to escape their share of the blame for what went on at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust - here's another extract of their excellent coverage of the Francis Report.

Asleep at the wheel or wilfully blind?

After the Bristol Inquiry, campaigners tried to pursue a charge of corporate manslaughter against the NHS, a charge that requires "a controlling mind" being wilfully blind to the suffereing, rather than just being asleep at the wheel.

The politicians were clearly asleep - none more so than Andy Burnham, Labour's health secretary from June 2009 and now a shadow of his former self. But in June 2007, as minister of state for delivery and reform at the Department of Health, he announced:

"I am delighted that Mid Staffordshire general hospitals NHS Trust has now reached a high enough standard to be considered as an NHS Foundation Trust .... I would like to congratulate all of the staff of the trust on this achievement."

The statement was about as accurate, falsely reassuring and incompetent as it's possible to be. Francis found that Burnham's understanding of how the system for gauging NHS trusts' suitability for foundation status operated 'differed from the reality'.

His "belief that it identified trusts which were 'high performing' was at odds with the fact there was little, if any, focus on an assessment of an applicant's ability to deliver services compliant with standards." 

Burnham backed Mid Staffs' application for foundation status back in 2007 after seeing a four-line summary from his civil servants. But the high death rates (127) at Mid Staffs for that year were openly published online and in the Daily Telegraph. The DoH and Burnham claim they were completely unaware of them. Unbelievable."  

What's shocking to me is that a Minister of State for NHS 'delivery and reform' - would not be aware that the ability to become an NHS Trust - had nothing whatever to do with the requirement to deliver quality services.

Now that is truly unbelievable as well - and yet Andy Burnham as Private Eye says is now a shadow of his former self - because he is now the Labour opposition's shadow spokesperson on health.  

Heaven helps us.

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