Boss ‘sorry beyond words’ after details on future of Public Health England leaked
THE head of Public Health England (PHE) has apologised to staff that news of the demise of the organisation was leaked.
Duncan Selbie, chief executive of PHE, said he is “sorry beyond words” the future of the body was briefed to the media before his staff were told.
A story placed with The Sunday Telegraph suggests that the Covid-19 response work of PHE is to be merged with NHS Test and Trace to form a new body designed specifically to deal with pandemics.
Other aspects of its operations, such as tackling obesity, could be handed over to councils and family doctors, the newspaper said.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, a new Institute for Health Protection will become “effective” from next month, although the merger will take until next spring to complete.
The note to staff, seen by the HSJ, states: “I am sorry beyond words at the way that decisions about our future have been briefed to the media before I have had the chance to explain them. The Prime Minister and Secretary of State wish to recreate an organisation with a sole focus on health protection and to bring together our health protection services with the budgets and people of the NHS test-and-trace programme to create a new national institute for health protection.
“The aim is to boost our unique scientific capability and world leading health protection expertise with much needed new investment.
“The future arrangements for delivering everything else we do for the country including on health improvement and our corporate services will be worked through over the coming weeks and months and will, of course, include formal consultation and the proper HR processes to ensure this is handled transparently and fairly.
“Any organisation that says it got
everything right is wrong and no public health body enters a pandemic expecting to look the same as a consequence. However, no one remotely close to our work of the past eight years, and since January on the pandemic would agree with the headlines that this change reflects ‘pandemic failure’ on our part.
“Certainly this is not what the Secretary of State believes or says in public or private.
“No public body has done more to protect the health of the people than PHE nor has more reason to be proud of its contribution.”
It comes as the Government faced fresh criticism over reports that it is planning to scrap PHE.
The union Unite said PHE is being used as a “fall guy” for the Government’s Covid-19 failings, while the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) said that “scapegoating PHE is unfair and potentially dangerous”.
A No.10 spokesman said: “We believe PHE have played an important role in our response to this pandemic and have worked on important issues such as detection, surveillance, contact tracing and testing, and we’ll continue to work closely with them.”
Asked whether the Government has asked any outside consultancies for advice on whether to shut down Public Health England, he added: “If you look at the road map and the wording, what we say around structures, we’ve been clear we must learn the right lessons from the crisis and act now to ensure structures are fit to cope with future epidemics.”
Responding to reports that Public Health England is to be replaced, the No10 spokesman said: “We have always said we must learn the right lessons from the crisis and act to ensure Government structures are fit to cope. But I would make the point that PHE have played an integral role in our response to this unprecedented pandemic.”