I didn’t watch the programme properly but it was on in the background whilst I was doing something else. I’m no fan of Mrs Widdecome nor her politics. However putting in an NHS superfamily politician was not going to have any useful learning it would simply reinforce their belief that the NHS was great and the problem was political.
AW made a number of quite open statements which I’d have though her haters would have respected/had trouble arguing with:
– targets are generating bad practice and clinicians should be left to make clinical decisions in the best interest of patients.
– all political parties like to chuck a little extra money at the NHS and hope that it’s back in the hands of the other side when it truly goes wrong.
– some of the biggest issues she saw (she was responsible for “bed management”) were not fundamentally those of the NHS they were social care problems (not surprisingly). Interestingly, and your view on this may differ, she did seem to point the finger a bit at the public/families of those in hospital who were delaying their departure. I’m not sure I completely agree with that, but at the same time I am sure many of them are vocal complainers about the state of the NHS, and quite possibly her former target voters!
I may have missed it, but I didn’t hear her making any suggestion that the issues were fundamentally vested in ownership/management/control of the NHS, or trying to push a political agenda.
