The former Conservative MP Steve Baker who was instrumental in triggering the 2013 Keogh Review, which included Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, has said the structure of the health service is behind its failings.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “The structure of incentives (in the NHS) appears to be wrong.
“If I may refer back to Wycombe, so in the 2010 to 2015 parliament, I had to keep a dossier of ‘never events’, things which should never happen, including deaths.
“I ended up using my voice in parliament to force the Trust into special measures and something called the Keogh Review, since when, of course, it’s been much improved.
“But at the time the trust leadership really wanted me to celebrate successes. I would show something terrible, which had happened, and they’d redirect me to some success. It was really horrific.
“We’d meet a constituent who suffered, in one case the family of a man who died, and to find you were being redirected to something else: Whoa, no, no, stop. This is the problem right here.
“There’s something structural about the system of incentives. Because I’m very clear in my own mind that when doctors, nurses, midwives go into that profession, I bet every day they want to do a great job, and many of them do.
“But somehow it’s going wrong, and it must be the structure of incentives around good people, putting them in a position where somehow they end up neglecting the wishes of parents or the worries of parents.
“The truth is that our outcomes are not as good as they should be. Other systems elsewhere in the world have better outcomes. I remember there was one news story that the NHS was being celebrated for its high performance, and it was high ranked across a range of measures, except outcomes.
“It would be easy to mock such a story, except for the human cost is so profound, especially in this case, when it’s babies.
“We should take it really seriously and be incredibly objective. Everybody wants to make sure that the public get great quality health care and free at the point of use, and that’s what we should do.
“Over the years, I’ve been accused of being ideological time and time again, but this is not about ideology, it’s about surveying other countries and seeing how they’ve done.
“It’s very little ideology, it’s about comparator countries. How could we do better?”
