We move now to the agenda items relating to our various committee reports.
Two reports there.
I think they are both self-evident.
I would not suggest adding anything.
Thank you very much.
We have Investment Committee and Audit and Risk.
We had a conversation on Monday that will be documented for the next Board, Chairman.
I would suggest we cover it then.
Thank you very much.
That brings me to any other business.
We have the date of the next meeting; I have one item of other business.
Can I just check whether anybody else has any items of other business?
Yes, there was one item.
It is just to let the Board know that, this afternoon, NHS England will be publishing
the report of the independent investigation into learning disability deaths at Southern
Health Foundation Trust.
Jane may want to say a word in a moment.
This was a report that we commissioned following the death of a young man, Connor Sparrowhawk,
in July 2013 in a unit in Oxford.
The report, which produces recommendations for the trust, for CCGs and for NHS Improvement,
CQC and ourselves, is being accepted, and it contains a number of important recommendations
which sync up with the work that we already have underway around the national Learning
Disability Mortality Review.
I will not say more ahead of the publication of the report this afternoon, but this is
an important and serious set of findings that need to be acted on.
The three national bodies – CQC and ourselves, with NHS Improvement – will be doing so.
NHS Improvement, as the regulator, has particular responsibilities in respect of this trust,
and will be acting accordingly.
Jane, I do not know if you wanted to add to that?
I do not think so, Simon.
You have set out the position completely.
The only thing I would add is that we have established a helpline, which is up and running
and will continue to run, for anybody that is concerned or wants to ask for further information.
That is already established, and we have the details of that already available.
We will reinforce that later this afternoon.
One other thing, unrelated to that.
Just to respond to some of the questions that might have been forming in people’s minds
following the allocations discussion that we had: I think it is worth clarifying that
the pace-of-change option that the Board has chosen is obviously a pro-equity pace change
allocation.
Therefore, some of the most outlying CCGs may not be getting real-terms increases on
the core CCG allocations, but I think it is worth clarifying that, when you take account
of the Sustainability and Transformation Fund investment which we expect that they will
receive, then in fact every CCG will be receiving, for their people, real terms funding increases
in 2016/2017, and that is likely to be the position thereafter, too.
That is just to clarify, should that doubt have formed in people’s minds.
Good.
Thank you very much, Simon.
In a moment, I am going to ask the Board to record thanks to three members of the Board
who are standing down, and for whom this is the last meeting.
That is Tim, Ciarán and Barbara.
Just in case there is any resistance to that proposal, let me just say a few words about
them.
Tim and Ciarán and Barbara have all been with us almost from the very beginning, so
this is quite a change moment for us as a Board.
They have been pivotal members of the Board, all three of them.
Tim has brought to us, I think, an enormous intellectual energy and drive, and a capacity
for disruption which is hugely welcomed in a very stable system such as this.
He has been the father of progeny which has grown, but not yet grown into adulthood, by
which I mean the digitisation of a service which we know will ultimately transform what
we are able to do for patients.
Tim, you are our Christmas gift to the people of Australia, and we wish you every good wish
for your time with Telstra Health.
We know that you will thrive and have a very fulfilling time there.
Ciarán is one of the founding fathers of NHS England, and has been an immensely powerful
influence on us, I think, in bringing us back to earth about how everything that we do,
even at the high levels when we talk about allocations, comes back to patients and comes
back to people.
Also I think, as he has done today, he convinces us that actually it is not all about money,
stupid.
It is actually about behaviours.
It is actually about how we influence the way in which humans, and the therapists and
the clinical people who deal with them, behave in order to produce hugely enhanced health
outcomes.
Ciarán’s term of office has come to an end, and unfortunately the British Council
have snapped him up and put him into an aircraft where, even from 35,000 feet, he has not been
able to continue with us.
Ciarán, we are very grateful for everything you have done.
Although Barbara has been with us and NHS England since the beginning, she has been
with the NHS almost, I think, since the beginning of the NHS.
That was a low blow!
As lawyers say, ‘As memory knoweth not to the contrary,’ so great has been her influence;
certainly for over 41 years, I think, as a GP and increasingly as a manager: coming into
PCTs, into SHA and then, in the fullness of time, blossoming from that background into
NHS England.
I have to say personally that she has been an extraordinary mentor to me, and has done
her very best to dispel the clouds of ignorance which still swirl around my head in relation
to the NHS.
Barbara, as your report today demonstrated, you are somebody who is in charge of operations,
somebody who delivers and who has had a huge loyalty across the whole of the workforce
who report to you, and much more broadly out into the NHS.
We all owe you an enormous debt of gratitude.
I am not going to ask them to respond.
What I am going to ask is: is that sufficient to persuade the Board to offer our warmest
thanks for everything these three have done, and our very best wishes for their future?
On that note I declare the meeting closed and I ask the Board to past the usual resolution
as to our conduct to close business.
Thank you very much everybody who joined us this morning.