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13th September 2016

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Chair of NHSI in conversation with Roy Lilley.

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Like his life depends on it

News and Comment from Roy Lilley

Dr Liam Fox, the business secretary, thinks the British business community is fat, lazy and spends Friday afternoon on the golf course.

Just for the record it looks to me like Fox could lose a pound or two himself and I have been in business, one way or another, since I was sixteen and in my time have exported to 80 countries, worldwide. Mostly in the days before Microsoft and mobile phones. It was very hard!

Fox, in my view, is a knuckle head. I first crossed swords with him, a good few years ago, in radio studio. He was the shadow health secretary and was peddling some cockamamie idea about vouchers, or health passports or top-ups or some such.

Fox bailed out of being a doctor, swapping the pressure of theatre greens for the commodious green benches of the House of Commons. As far as I know he has never employed a living soul, never created wealth or jobs and survived on tax payer funded employment, and gobbling-off.

He is a menace. But, so are all the Brexit-Brigade. Boris is at best a dissembler, a laughing stock and based on his promises about NHS funding post-EU, not to put too fine a point on it, told us lies.

David Davis is the sort of man who could make the cooking instructions for a Pot-Noodle seem Machiavellian.

Mother May, wearing her Amanda Wakely two tone, on the steps of Downing Street, spoke of equality and has since gone on to reintroduce Grammar Schools. I can't find it in the Tory manifesto?

Needless to say I failed my 11+ and from that moment felt I wasn't good enough to be educated. I gave up.

Chancellor Hammond has announced; City bankers, here from the EU will be allowed to stay. No mention of doctors and nurses.

So, I suppose we could say; it's all going terribly well!

In the meantime the NHS is in melt-down and the spotlight is on the Tinkerman.

Strikes, money, targets, performance, complaints... you know the score.

The rag-bag of idiots running the country is matched only by the bin-bag of politicians trying to run the Labour Party.

Of the lot of them the only conviction one is the un-electable Jeremy Corbyn! It looks like the Ocado delivery man has more chance of getting into Downing Street. Integrity doesn't count for much.

If Dr Fox had said;

The EU made it difficult for some smaller companies to export and as a result only 11% of them give it a go. We are going to encourage them, set up a 'how to export' help line and support them... because we need the revenues...

My guess is some would have given it a go.

If Boris had told the truth about �350m we might believe him now. If Hammond had said;

"... we are working on EU residency, instead of turning people lives, families and livelihoods into a bargaining chip, we might respect him."

If Mother May had.... well, why bother. She wants to be a plastic Thatcher.

What about the Tinkerman?

Love him or loath him, he's all we've got. He could have bailed out of the NHS and didn't. He could have sold bits of it and hasn't. All the contracting and outsourcing is a Labour legacy.

Tarzan and the Jim Reaper will deliver an NHS of sorts by the 2020 elections. The Tinkerman should keep out of the day to day and forget ideas of new initiatives.

His job is to squeeze more cash out of Hammond and get a grip on EU-stayers. It is important. I have spoken to doctors and nurses who are making plans to leave and they tell me they are discouraging compatriots from coming here.

The Tinkerman has months of work ahead of him on sorting out EU arrangements for education, cooperation, research, funding, benchmarking and development. Organ donation, regulation, device and App standards. The inner workings of the NHS are entwined with the EU... they must not become a tangle.

Driving the digital future, answering the question 'how did we do today', making staff feel coming to work is important. These should be his preoccupations.

Now, of all times the Tinkerman needs the courage to crack heads together in Cabinet, pat backs on the front line, bang the drum for the NHS, give it back its confidence, encourage ideas and lead like his life depends on it.

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Contact Roy - please use this e-address

roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net

Know something I don't - email me in confidence.

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