Niall Dickson possible CEO of the GMC - Not as shiny as he's bald looking

Is Niall Dickson Herculaen enough to cope with the mess in King Augeas' stables, aka the General Medical Council? What does Niall know of predeterminations? of quasi judicial perversions of justice. He will have to divert the Thames to Manchester, if he is serious about cleaning up the GMC. What with Wakefield, Southall, and a host of other iniquities. He could do worse than start here http://nhsexposedblog.blogspot.com/ And no, I don't mean close the blog down, I mean sort out some of the issues it raises.

Can Niall Dickson do better than apply a further coat of whitewash?

Niall Dickson has been appointed as new chief executive of the GMC, to take up post in January 2010. Mr Dickson has been chief executive of the King's Fund since 2004, prior to which he was BBC's social affairs editor.

More about the King's Fund

>The King’s Fund’s independence means we are uniquely placed to provide an objective perspective on government health policies and those of Opposition parties, as well as brokering debate on key issues affecting the health service and patients


The Senior Management Team
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/who_we_are/whos_who/board_of_trustees/

There are 8 people on this board:

1. Simon Stevens - President of Global Health at UnitedHealth Group. Before that he worked as the Prime Minister's Health Advisor at 10 Downing Street, and at the Department of Health
2. Dr Penny Dash - She is an adviser to many organisations including the NHS, McKinsey & Co, pharmaceutical companies, independent health care providers, and private equity groups. Former Department of Health Head of Strategy and Planning, working closely with Alan Milburn in the development of the NHS Plan
3. Strone Macpherson. Chairman of Tribal consulting (as well as Chairman of J P Morgan Fleming Smaller Companies Investment Trust, Close Brothers Group (investment bank), and British Empire Securities). The Tribal group has been appointed to the DH’s Framework for procuring External Support for Commissioners (FESC) i.e PCTs pay Tribal to help with their commissioning functions. Tribal also provides “technical experts” in all aspects of funding, from PFI, LIFT and public procurement to social enterprises and boast the largest health architectural practice in Europe. See more here: http://www.tribalgroup.co.uk/Documents/Health/Health_brochure_2008.pdf
4. Jude Goffe. Trained as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte Touche. She is a founding non-executive director of Monitor, the regulator of NHS foundation trusts.
5. Professor Julian Le Grand. Former Health advisor to Tony Blair. The leading academic proponent of the choice agenda and he advised the World Bank and the Treasury
6. David Wootton. Lawyer and partner at Allen & Overy LLP. Allen & Overy is a law firm specialising in international mergers and acquisitions, corporate transactions and corporate governance
7. Dame Jacqueline Docherty. Management Executive at the Department of Health, and has worked with the Scottish Office for four years
8. Cyril Chantler is Chairman of The Kings Fund. He is an adviser to the Associate Parliamentary Health Group. This Group enables parliamentarians, policy makers, healthcare professionals and the health industry to promote and discuss the national health agenda, bringing them together in a forum that encourages constructive and mutually beneficial dialogue


There are also 21 Senior Associates of the organisation:
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/who_we_are/whos_who/senior_associates/

1. Mark Britnell, helped develop the NHS plan 2000 and was the champion of World Class Commissioning, before jumping ship to work for KPMG, a management consultancy firm that has won contracts to advise on NHS commissioning! He also (rather appropriately) sits on the Advisory Board of the National Consumer Council
2. Professor Paul Corrigan, management consultant. Married to Hilary Armstrong, labour MP. July 2001 he worked as a special adviser to Alan Milburn first and then John Reid, the then Secretary of States for Health. 2005 he began advising the Prime Minister, then then took up the post of Director of Commissioning Improvement and Innovation for NHS London in June 2007. Throughout this period he was actively involved in developing the whole reform programme of the NHS.
3. Dr Richard Lewis, a director at Ernst and Young UK, and recently spent a year on secondment to the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit
4. Alasdair Liddell, Independent Consultant and health adviser to a number of technology and service companies. Former Director of Planning for the NHS. Led the teams working on The New NHS 1997 White Paper and the Information for Health review of the NHS information strategy, and was responsible for the development and launch of NHS Direct and NHS Direct He left the Department of Health in 2000 to help set up a new media company, and now works as an independent consultant.
5. Laurie McMahon is policy adviser to Nuffield Hospitals and director of Loop2 – an independent catalyst consultancy that helps leaders and their organisations develop creative responses to growth and change.
6. Julia Cumberlege, Conservative Party Peer and former Health Minister
7. Keith Palmer was until recently Vice Chairman of NM Rothschild investment bank. He is currently Chairman of CEPA, a public policy consultancy, and Chairman of Infraco, a public-private partnership
8. Julien Forder is Professor of the Economics of Social Policy and Deputy Director of PSSRU at the University of Kent. Seconded to the Strategy Unit in the Department of Health, providing advice to Ministers on social care and related areas of health policy.
9. Jan Sobieraj is Chief Executive of Sheffield Primary Care Trust (PCT). Chair of the National CEO NPfIT Reference Group, a member of the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement Sounding Board and a member of the NHS National Advisory Committee for Resource Allocation

There 46 members of the King’s Fund Expert group:
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/who_we_are/whos_who/

Many have had key roles within the Department of Health. This group is mainly concerned with developing policy, but a significant number are involved in Leadership and change management programmes. This is devised to help the King’s Fund disseminate its ideas with the healthcare sector.

The most notable are:

1. Jocelyn Cornwell. In 1999 she was seconded into the Department of Health to lead the team establishing the first national health inspectorate in England and Wales, the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI). Later, as Deputy Chief Executive at CHI (2000-2003), she was responsible for the design of the review methodologies, research and evaluation. In 2003-4, as Acting Chief Executive, she managed the transition from CHI to the Healthcare Commission
2. Dr Anna Dixon. Director of Policy. She has also worked in the Strategy Unit at the Department of Health where she focused on a range of issues including choice, global health and public health
3. Richard Humphries. Worked for the Department of Health in helping to support the implementation of national health and social care policy; initially as Director of the Health and Social Care Change Agent Team and then Chief Executive of the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP)
4. Sarah Waller. Former assistant Nursing irector of nursing for the North Thames Region and also worked at the NHS Executive, Department of Health, as head of management development and training for the NHS
5. Mark Jennings. Held the role of National Lead for Clinical Systems Improvement with the NHS Modernisation Agency. He also led a Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit review focused on the patient journey through the emergency care system and was a member of the Department of Health project team responsible for delivering the maximum 4-hour Accident & Emergency wait.
6. Candace Imison, Deputy Director of Policy. She worked on strategy at the Department of Health between 2000 and 2006.. She contributed to the White Paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say, as well as Keeping the NHS Local and the Wanless Review. She also led a major modernisation initiative for the Modernisation Agency, Hospital at Night (2003−4).


The King’s Fund (in its own words) aims to “shape policy, transform services and bring about behaviour change”,

The King's Fund is not neutral, and its approach must be open to discussion and a more critical perspective of the work that this organisation produces.

Many thanks to Dr Clive Peedell Consultant Clinical Oncologist JCUH, Middlesbrough

and in the words of Polly Toynbee's father, Arnold Toynbee

"I suspect that a worldwide totalitarian movement of the communist-fascist kind may overthrow existing institutions - including local sovereignty, political democracy, economic private enterprise -

and at the eleventh hour some such worldwide totalitarian movement will stabilise human affairs by taking such drastic actions in which indespenable fundamental reforms will be intertwined with atrocious acts of injustice"

This movement is with us now and it is the New World Order. Mandelson, Blair and the NuLabour government, are nailing down our traditional institutions to make the individual powerless.

As Margaret Thatcher said of Aids - "Don't die of ignorance"



George Orwell's book, Animal Farm is a warning not an instruction manual