I know just the man to run the NHS

AHEADLINE in last week’s Daily Mail leapt out at me over my bacon and eggs. ‘YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP!’ I wonder where they got that idea from. Paul Bracchi and Tim Stewart’s doublepage report concerned a man called Jon Andrewes, who had managed to obtain a string of high-profile public sector jobs based on bogus CVs.

He claimed to have an impressive list of academic qualifications, including degrees from Bristol, Plymouth and Edinburgh universities and a diploma from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Pure invention, but sufficiently plausible to secure him the chairmanship of two NHS Trusts and other senior posts with a health partnership and a hospice charity.

So convincing was Andrewes that he beat 117 other candidates to become the head of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, which has a budget of £380 million and employs 5,000 staff.

In the 12 years before he was rumbled, Andrewes also worked as chairman of the Torbay NHS Trust and CEO of St Margaret’s Hospice, a palliative care charity in Taunton, Somerset.

During that time, he earned £1million in salary and benefits. When his deception was finally exposed and he was convicted of fraud and jailed for two years, he still had £96,000 in the bank.

That was confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. But the Court of Appeal has just ruled that his prison sentence was punishment enough and he should be allowed to keep the money, since he earned it.

The court decided he had given ‘full value’ to his employers, even though he had obtained the jobs fraudulently.

Despite lacking the qualifications he boasted, there appear to have been no complaints about the quality of Andrewes’ work.

‘Under Jon’s leadership, we achieved a hell of a lot. He got things done,’ said a Lib Dem councillor in Brixham, Torbay, where Andrewes was credited with bringing in millions of pounds of investment.

‘I don’t agree with anyone forging qualifications, but I suspect he got frustrated with people less able than himself getting promotions because he did not have the right piece of paper.’

Andrewes started life as a builder before training as a social worker. And although he lacked the relevant degrees and diplomas, that didn’t stop him enjoying a successful career as a top-level NHS and charity administrator.

Which begs the question: are any of these fancy qualifications worth the paper they’re written on?

After all, the panjandrums running Public Health England are dripping with degrees — for all the good that’s done us. When push came to shove, the body charged with preparing for a pandemic proved worse than useless. There’s no need for me to detail again the well-documented multiple failures over the provision of protective equipment and track and trace.

This column has been on Public Health England’s case for the past six years, since shortly after it was established. Instead of concentrating on the primary job it was set up for, most of the time PHE has been engaged in ridiculous displacement activity.

Past initiatives have included instructing us to stay indoors and draw the curtains whenever the sun shines; banning supermarkets from selling daffodils alongside fruit and veg, just in case Chinese shoppers mistake them for spring onions; and organising a campaign to hand out free rubber johnnies at food banks to the over-60s — patronisingly dubbed ‘Silver Singles’ — to encourage them to have safe sex.

Lately, they’ve been beavering away (from home, naturally) drawing up a list of banned substances under the Government’s fatuous anti-obesity drive — including outlawing daytime TV advertising of killer foods such as cheese and mustard.

YET while PHE has been nannying us to distraction, it has failed spectacularly in its principal task of protecting us against genuine threats to our health.

For instance, in the midst of the Covid panic, it is easy to forget that in 2015 PHE frittered away £100 million on an expensive influenza vaccine, which proved effective in just three per cent of cases. That winter 20,000 people died of flu, which puts the number of people dying from (not with) corona this year into some kind of perspective.

Finally, PHE is being put out of its misery. But who would bet against those responsible for the Covid clustershambles ascending seamlessly to similar elevated positions in the super new agency which will replace it — especially given this Government’s fatal attraction to ‘experts’ and ‘following the science’?

It’s not as if our hapless Health Secretary Matt Hancock is overqualified when it comes to running the NHS.

Yes, he’s got a degree in PPE. Unfortunately that stands for Philosophy, Politics and Economics, not Personal Protective Equipment. His brief real-life experience before entering politics full-time was limited to computer software and analysing the housing market.

Still, soon-to-be-sacked Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is a former fireplace salesman, which helps explain why he’s done such a magnificent job sorting out the GCSE results.

Fraudster Jon Andrewes was caught when study of his various CVs revealed that he had adopted three different identities.

That may have earned him two years in jail, but it would have been no bar to advancement in politics.

Grant Shapps invented a second persona for himself as an alleged millionaire internet marketer called Michael Green, charging clients £183 for tips on making money from the world wide web.

That didn’t stop him later rising to become Tory chairman and, currently, Transport Secretary, in which capacity he is pursuing a demented anti-car, pro-bike agenda guaranteed to cripple freedom of movement and kill off city centres.

WHEN you look at the pig’s ear Hancock and Shapps have made of their respective portfolios, does anyone seriously believe that Jon Andrewes could have done any worse — fake qualifications or otherwise?

He seems to have made a reasonable job of running all the hospital trusts and charities he’s been involved in.

Now he’s out of prison, maybe we should put him in charge of the NHS. After all, before he got his collar felt, he had accumulated 12 successful years’ solid experience.

What have we got to lose? This is the kind of outside-the-box thinking Dominic Cummings is always banging on about.

He advocates hiring ‘misfits and weirdos’ to shake up Whitehall.

Why not fraudsters and jailbirds, too?

As someone once said, you couldn’t make it up.