National Clinical Director of Adult Neurology

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I do not want in any way to diminish the huge clinical importance of this and the suffering of many people with long-term neurological conditions. They are among some of the worst illnesses that anyone can have and I am delighted that my noble friend recovered from his. From everything that I have been told by NHS England and Bruce Keogh, I do not believe that the lack of a national clinical director will in any way detract from the resources that we are making available to neurology.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have enormous respect for Sir Bruce Keogh but, as my noble friend Lady Gale said, NHS England has essentially set out to decimate the influence of clinical advisers at the level of senior decision-making teams. When we set up national clinical directors, they were based in the Department of Health, had direct access to Ministers and were hugely influential. The current situation in NHS England is that they are often part-time appointments with virtually no support and limited influence. Is it not time that Ministers started to reassert control over services for which they are accountable to Parliament?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I do not think I agree with the last part of the question. We have set up NHS England as an arm’s-length body, and a key part of the reforms—the bit that probably everyone supported in the 2012 Act—was to get politicians more out of the day-to-day running of the NHS and to give more power to clinicians. It is better that clinicians rather than politicians should make these decisions. On what the noble Lord said about decimating the influence of clinical advice in NHS England, I just do not think that that is the case. In so far as he has raised it with me, I will have a meeting with Bruce Keogh and put that point to him and get his response.