The verdict on Darzi

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Responses to Lord Darzi's plans for healthcare

David Pink, chief executive, Long Term Conditions Alliance

"Individual healthcare budgets shouldn't be seen as about better managing the money. It's about putting people in control so they can decide how their care is delivered, which is about quality."

Paul Sutton, chief executive, South East Coast Ambulance Service

"We're glad to see outcomes and experiences right up there along with innovation. We want to move from response times as a measure of performance to outcome measures, which are what staff and patients want to see."

Prem Singh, chief executive, Derby City PCT

"It must not stop here. The process of clinical engagement must continue in the implementation phase."

Bernard Ribeiro, president, Royal College of Surgeons

"My initial reaction is that it's long on diagnosis, short on treatment."

Sir Ian Carruthers, chief executive, NHS South West

"It is both challenging and very good and we should all pull together to take it forward because it will improve the NHS and the health of people in this country."

Margaret Edwards, chief executive, NHS Yorkshire and the Humber

"There's a really fine balance in doing what needs to be done nationally and giving people enough freedom and I think he's got it right."

Bernard Crump, chief executive, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement

"The really crucial issue is how the NHS now prepares in each different part of the country for the implementation process."

Candy Morris, chief executive, NHS South East Coast

"Overall this takes us forward, focusing on quality, patient experience and improving health."

Michael Summers, vice chair, Patients Association

"We welcome the new constitution and patient rights. There are elements which should help achieve better healthcare for patients and help to avoid the postcode lottery. Sadly, PCTs will still be able not to fund a particular drug - disappointing."

Julian Le Grand, professor of social policy, LSE

"We have been quite good at putting incentives into the system to improve numbers; where we haven't been so good is putting incentives in the system to produce quality. There is the start of a strategy to do that here."

John Adler, chief executive, Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals trust

"The annual quality report will give quality the same status as finance, and that is a clever idea. The big challenge will be populating such a report with data."

Neil McKay, chief executive, NHS East of England

"The enhanced incentives for systems and providers to make sure patient satisfaction is taken seriously are fantastic."

Lord Adebowale, chief executive, Turning Point

"The NHS will not deliver personalised care or integration until the links between health and social care are made clearly, and this review needs to say more."

Cynthia Bower, chief executive, NHS West Midlands

"It is pushing it back towards what the clinicians are saying and really focusing on quality - that is absolutely right."

Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat health spokesman

"Failing to tackle the centralised nature of the NHS and the inefficiency that goes with [it] is the biggest failure of the report. Beyond that I think it is extraordinary the statement made no reference to mental health at all."

Hamish Meldrum, chairman, BMA

"Do you want real leaders who can be quite challenging and may want to do things in a different way, or is leadership a byword for what I would call followership - which basically means let's get some clinicians on board who will tell the other ones to do what they are told?"

Anonymous trust chief executive

"I am getting very tired of the idea that there are no targets. It is just bullshit. Anything that has to be reported is a target no matter what they call it."

Andrew Morgan, chief executive, Bedfordshire PCT

"The paper empowers those of us who work locally to pick it up and run with it. As a PCT chief executive it puts the ball firmly in my court to make the most of it."