Wes Streeting has said the “guilty secret” of the NHS is that underperforming senior managers earning six figures can be relieved of one job only to then be re-hired in another part of the health service.
The health secretary suggested such people could be “rotten apples” and added: “rotten apples are unacceptable”.
In a speech on Monday morning, Streeting will unveil plans to “manage out” poor performing senior managers in the health service.
Speaking to the at the NHS Providers conference in Liverpool, he will also announce that hospitals and other providers will be assessed on performance and placed in public league tables.
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Streeting is set to tell health leaders that there “will be no more rewards for failure” and managers will be sacked if they cannot improve patient outcomes and finances.
The changes form part of the Labour government’s strategy to reduce waiting lists “from 18 months to 18 weeks”.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme ahead of his speech, Streeting said: “Where we have poorly performing senior managers I will make no apology for managing those people out because people know, and this is the guilty secret of the NHS, there are very senior managers who are paid on average, let’s not forget, £145,000 a year who are managed out, given a pay off in one trust and then reincarnate in another NHS trust.
“Those might be the rotten apples and I want to recognise that there are some outstanding leaders right across the NHS but those rotten apples are unacceptable and give the rest of the profession a bad name so we have got to manage those out as well as investing in leadership development training and crucially setting free the highest performers so we have less top down, less centralisation, less management by diktat from the centre.”
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