Hancock will face difficult questions over his power grab to stop ‘NHSE games’

The NHS bill due to land in Parliament before the summer break will be the first for nearly 10 years, so will address various overdue changes and is certain to be significant.

The bill’s thrust has become clear from the draft of the government’s white paper leaked on Friday, though some important details might change before a final version is published in the next few weeks. Many of the white paper proposals are what NHS England has been asking for in formal proposals over the last 18 months, and reflect the direction the NHS has been moving slowly but inexorably towards for several years.

NHSE’s central aim of clearing up the NHS landscape by turning integrated care systems into statutory agencies, but without overdoing the central specification of how they will work, is largely intact. Clinical commissioning groups are reconstituted as ICSs, a move unpopular with some but accepted by most. There is a formal role for local authorities planned in the shape of “partnership councils”. This creates a little extra bureaucracy but does not give them real power in the NHS. NHSE and ICSs are given a bit more sway over foundation trusts, but probably not enough to set off a huge row with NHS Providers.

The leaked version of the white paper also includes proposals which NHSE will not be happy about, including giving the health secretary a sweeping “general power to direct NHS England on its functions”, another to transfer functions between all arm’s length bodies and even abolish them, and ability to intervene at any stage in NHS service reconfigurations.

If pursued, these risk bringing even more toxic politics back into the NHS, both in the process of putting through the legislation itself, and beyond that, in the day to day running of the service.

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Source: HSJ, 6 February 2021