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Finally something to thank Lansley for
Well done Andrew Lansley. Now there's a sentence you don't get to say very often. But the health secretary's intervention in the sorry saga of the Nursing and Midwifery Council's (NMC) bungling attempts to balance its books by picking nurses' pockets is welcome. Particularly welcome is his statement that 'a fee increase for registrants is difficult to justify at a time of pay restraint'. It certainly is, especially an increase of nearly 60 per cent.
Mr Lansley, responding to union pressure, is urging the NMC to take its case for a fee rise to external audit. He has written to the council arguing that such a move is needed to ensure the NMC's plans are 'robust and future proof'.
The health secretary's letter is the second intervention in the space of a month from a government that is clearly becoming increasingly frustrated at the NMC's inability to get its house in order. And aren't we all?
The imposition of career civil servant Mark Addison as chair was a sign that the government is losing patience with the regulator. However galling it was for the current regime, who were midway through their own selection process, at least it means someone with a track record of improving the performance of public bodies will be at the helm by the end of September.
Mr Addison is not a nurse, so you would hope that when a new chief executive is recruited that he or she will be. The two people in these top jobs need to have skills that complement each other. They hold the fate of the NMC in their hands and they need to turn around this failing organisation.
What the NMC spends its money on needs to be examined and the things that it does not need to be doing should be scrapped, for example professional development work that is provided adequately by other organisations.
The Lansley letter talks about the need to ensure past mistakes are 'understood and not repeated'. It is a cleverly worded missive and, as you would expect from a politician, it allows plenty of scope for the powers that be to get their way. But the fact is the health secretary has injected a sense of urgency into the process and he has made it just that bit more difficult for the NMC to drive through this unjust fee rise.
Editorial | August 8 2012 | Vol 26 week 49
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Nursing Standard is published every Wednesday by RCN Publishing Company Ltd, the publishing company of the Royal College of Nursing.
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