FELLOW TRADE UNIONISTS who read our articles will know that the NLTU – National Liberal Trade Unionists – regularly reproduce and echo the views of Dr Max Pemberton. Dr Pemberton is a London-based NHS psychiatrist, journalist and writer.

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Like Dr Pemberton, the NLTU is totally opposed to the NHS being run as a business. Nor should it be seen as a cash cow for Big Pharma or various trans-national corporations. We believe that the NHS should remain a public service – and not run for private profit. Indeed, we wonder what sort of society could think about (yet alone tolerate) making money out of the illness and misery of other people.

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With this in mind we reprint an another article by Dr Pemberton – which appeared in a copy of the Daily Mail in late August of last year. Once again, we’d like to stress that our sole intention is to stimulate mature debate and it goes without saying that there are no official links between the NLTU, Dr Pemberton or the Daily Mail.

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Put NHS Bosses’ Pay On The Line

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I DON’T believe I am alone in being outraged at news that health trusts are still paying eye-watering amounts of money to senior managers.

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Latest figures show that some temporary managers brought in to try to save failing clinical commissioning groups are on rates equal to £200,000 a year – and some are on more than £300,000.  What on earth is gong on?

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Despite government ministers saying they will clamp down on this kind of largess, the NHS claims it needs to pay these kinds of wages to be competitive and attract the best candidates.

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Rubbish.  Most of these managers that I have encountered are mediocre at best.

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And the fact that out of 32 failing clinical commissioning groups that hired them, just three are deemed to be no longer failing, suggests they aren’t worth the money.

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I don’t agree with the NHS being run like a business, but this is the way it seems to be going.  It therefore seems to make sense to me that – just as happens in the corporate sector – the pay for these managers should be linked to performance.

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I guarantee that as soon as managers’ salaries are dependent on the care that’s being delivered, we’ll suddenly start to see a lot more of them at the coalface and things will suddenly start to improve.