Say hospital activists
Anne-Marie Stretch said: “Everything we do is focused on maintaining services for local people.
“That is why, over the past 18 months, we have been asking our staff and the public for their views in our Shaping Care Together programme.
“Like many other NHS organisations we are facing workforce challenges and we are unlikely to be able to continue providing some services on our own.
“We need the support of the wider NHS to sustain them, which is why we entered a partnership with St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust last autumn.”
Kevin Lavery, chief executive designate of the NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB), said: “There has been extensive engagement with partners about the membership of the ICB unitary board and the contents of the constitution and these have been discussed in meetings where the public has been able to observe.
“The board membership has been confirmed and is comprised of nonexecutive members, ICB executive directors and partner members, who will be collectively and corporately accountable for organisational performance, ensuring the ICB’s functions are effectively and efficiently discharged and its financial obligations are met.
“In addition, we have confirmed we will have a number of participants at board meetings in order to inform its decision-making and the discharge of its functions.
“Participants do not hold accountability, nor do they have voting rights, but are invited at the discretion of the chair in order to bring a broader perspective to the discussions, particularly for items where they can bring a perspective relevant to their area of expertise.
“We already have a mixture of public sector and private providers within our health and care system and we have clear processes in place to manage conflicts of interest, which have to be declared and recorded and made transparent.”
A spokesperson for Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care System added that participants will include the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) sector and Healthwatch and said that the model constitution for ICBs published by the NHS included information on just who is allowed to be a member of the board.
They said exclusions could include anyone who could be seen as ‘undermining the independence of the health service because of the candidate’s involvement with the private healthcare sector or otherwise.’
They added that NHS branding guidelines stipulate that third party providers must apply the NHS Identity to information relating to the
NHS services they provide, and signpost patients and the public to those services but cannot use the NHS Identity on their own organisation’s corporate marketing, communications and promotional activity.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “It is untrue to say that the NHS is being privatised.
“Integrated Care Boards will be NHS bodies and their work driven by health outcomes, not profit.
“We’re investing a record £39 billion into the health and care system over the next three years to ensure it has the long-term resource to provide world-class care, while delivering the biggest catch-up programme in the NHS’s history.
“Our Health and Care Act 2022 built on the NHS’s own proposals for reform and will ensure a health system that is less bureaucratic, more accountable, and more integrated in the wake of the pandemic.”