Mid Staffs scandal: NHS boss ‘determined’ to stay
Sir David Nicholson, who presided over the scandal at the Mid Staffordshire hospital, tells MPs he is “absolutely determined” to lead NHS health reforms despite calls for him to resign.
Sir David is now chief executive of the NHS, and was adamant in his appearance in front of MPs that he would stay in his role.
He said that the NHS is currently at “maximum risk” as the controversial changes are implemented throughout the country and that he would stay in his role to see it through.
His appearance in front of the health select committee comes one month after the publication of the Francis report into serious failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which found that hundreds of patients were exposed to risk because of routine neglect and systemic failings “at every level”.
The NHS boss was in charge of the regional health authority for 10 months between 2005 and 2006 – part of the time that patients were being mistreated at Stafford hospital.
The report also said the system had failed by putting corporate interests ahead of patients’ needs.
Read more from Channel 4 News on the Mid Staffordshire care scandal
Leadership ‘lost its focus’
Campaigners have called for Sir David’s resignation and 40 MPs have also signed an early day motion calling for him to resign.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also said that those responsible for the Stafford scandal should be struck off.
The NHS boss admitted that patients were not always put first, but rejected any notion that he should be stripped of his job as one of the most senior NHS bosses.
“During that period (while he worked at the Mid Staffs authority), across the NHS as a whole, patients were not the centre of the way the system operated,” Sir David told MPs.
“For a whole variety of reasons, not because people were bad but because there were a whole set of changes going on and a whole set of things we were being held accountable for from the centre, which created an environment where the leadership of the NHS lost its focus.”
He said that the NHS was facing its greatest challenge in the coming months, with plans to abolish over 160 organisations and set up another 211 – and all this after losing 13,500 administrative and management staff.
“So it is at maximum risk over the next few days,” he said.
Sir David took on responsibility for leading the NHS through the government’s reforms two years ago.
“I promised both the government and the NHS that I would see that through and I am absolutely determined to do that over the next period,” he added.