East of England Ambulance Service
Debate between Keith Simpson and Anna Soubry(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Anna Soubry
In short, what I will say is that the Secretary of State has made it clear that it is a culture that he will not accept, and that no member of his ministerial team will accept. He is now becoming undoubtedly the champion of the patient. We are seeing that. We saw it last week with the CQC and then of course we saw the change: the names of people who had been put forward in the report were made public and people are now being held to account. We are beginning to see at least a tackling of this culture; we now need to see some results.
Mr Keith Simpson
My hon. Friend has alluded, as have other hon. Friends, to leadership. Is the NHS thinking of positively recruiting from senior retired people from the armed forces, who display leadership and the ability to get people to work together? A brigadier had to sort out BSE over 10 years ago, because nobody in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs could.
Anna Soubry
That is an excellent point, extremely well made. I shall certainly take it away and speak to the Secretary of State, because this really is important, but to be fair to the NHS, it does have its own leadership academy, where it seeks to bring on people. That is within the NHS. But I think that we should involve far more people from other fields, who could come into the NHS—people with huge skill sets, who have proved those in other walks of life. I am thinking of, for example, retired judges, who would have an invaluable role to play—people who have shown real leadership and not been afraid to make tough decisions in the right circumstances. All these people should now be being looked at actively to play a role.