Report comment

This demonstrates that there is a culture of no accountability and a perverse reward for failure in the NHS. When Gordon Brown was found asleep at the metaphorical wheel, whilst supposedly steering the UK economy, the UK electorate was able to boot him out, despite a flawed election system.

In a previous article in HSJ Cynthia Bower, now head of the Care Quality Commission stated that the SHA ‘did not have the capacity to have a detailed oversight of the region’s health services’. So if having a detailed oversight is not part of its activities what does a SHA do then? What did she do to develop this capacity?

At the time of the troubles at Stafford, Sir David Nicholson, now Chief Executive of the NHS, was in charge of the SHA and so involved in overseeing the merger that his organisation (HSJ 18 April 2011) failed to attend to its core business of spotting problems.

With these people at the wheel again of this time a much larger whole NHS re-organisation we can all go to sleep again – will we wake up though?