As Guido revealed yesterday, the three organisations which received funding from NHS England’s ‘Health as a Social Movement’ programme all just happened to be headed by senior New Labour SpAds. The NEF’s then CEO Marc Stears was Ed Miliband’s speechwriter, while the RSA and Nesta’s CEOs – Matthew Taylor and Geoff Mulgan – were both policy chiefs in Downing Street under Tony Blair. Guido is still investigating exactly how much they all got, unlike the NEF who’ve publicly documented their half-a-million pounds, Nesta and the RSA haven’t published detailed income breakdowns…
Of course there was another top Blair SpAd who was in Downing Street at the same time as Taylor and Mulgan – the “architect of Labour’s health service reforms” according to The Guardian – Simon Stevens. Now the chief executive of NHS England…
The ‘Health as a Social Movement’ programme itself was Stevens’ brainchild as part of his five-year plan for the NHS in 2014. Stevens has certainly maintained a good working relationship with his former colleagues in their new roles, he’s a regular fixture at speaking events for Nesta and gets frequent mentions on the RSA blog. Taylor is particularly fond of talking up “my former Downing Street colleague”.
Just after Stevens launched his five-year plan, Taylor was quick to praise it in a blog titled “Joining Up Is Hard To Do”, where none other than Geoff Mulgan gets name-dropped in the second paragraph for his work promoting “more integrated working”. A year later and they’d both won the contracts from Stevens’ new scheme. Looks like joining up wasn’t so hard to do after all!
Head of NHS England Simon Stevens has told Today that the NHS is on course to be fully prepared for a no deal exit from the European Union, confirming that, despite the scare stories, there will be no medicine shortages in the event of no deal:
“If everyone does what they are being asked to do, particularly around the transport and logistics infrastructure, then yes that will be the case.”
This confirms Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s announcement over the weekend that he is “confident that we’ll have the unhindered supply of medicines so long as the plans that we have in place are properly enacted.”
Stevens also took aim at some of the scare stories around post-Brexit staffing shortages, confirming that more non-EU migrants work in the NHS than EU migrants at the moment, and that after we have left the EU “there is no reason why we can’t get this right.” Maybe unrelenting Remainers should listen to the experts…
NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens used to hype up the risks to the NHS of leaving the EU. He even went on Marr during the referendum to personally condemn Vote Leave’s £350 million a week figure. So Guido welcomes Steven’s conversion to the cause at today’s NHS conference in Birmingham, where he has called on the government to spend the Brexit dividend on the NHS: “Vote Leave for a better funded health service – £350 million a week”. Having his cake and eating it? Or is Stevens finally embracing the benefits of Brexit…
