King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust Debate

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Department: Department of Health and Social Care

King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust

Marie Rimmer Excerpts
Tuesday 12th December 2017

(6 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Philip Dunne Portrait Mr Dunne
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My hon. Friend is quite right. There are financial pressures across the NHS in England. We have been very clear and very open about that. Some trusts are managing within those financial challenges and other trusts are not. That is in large part down to the rigour and leadership given to those trusts. Unfortunately, in this trust there has not been sufficient of either.

Marie Rimmer Portrait Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
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Given the financial incapacity problems currently affecting the NHS, is it right or fair that individual acute trust leaders should be removed from their post when surely their perceived failures are part of wider systems issues and funding pressures?

Philip Dunne Portrait Mr Dunne
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The hon. Lady is right to identify pressures across the system, but it is also the case that when leaders change their position in a very short period of time and oversee a period of significant deterioration, the regulator has to take a view on whether those individuals are the right people to continue to lead that organisation. I think that that is what has happened in this case.