How family grief took its toll on NHS boss
THE head of NHS Scotland has revealed the deaths of his mother and father within five months of one another earlier this year spurred his decision to step down from the “24 hours a day, seven days a week” role.
Paul Gray, who will leave the posts of chief executive of NHS Scotland and directorgeneral for Health and Social Care in February, said it had led him to take stock after 40 years as a public servant.
Mr Gray, 56, said: “In the course of this year, 2018, my mum passed away in May and my dad passed away in October, within five months of each other.
“It made me think a bit that this job is really 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I came to it knowing that was the case, so that’s not a complaint – it’s just the reality.”
He said he also wanted to devote more time in the evenings and weekends to church commitments and family, and had not wanted to delay the decision until the end of 2019, when his departure would overlap with the run-up to the next Scottish Parliament elections in 2020.
He said: “Not wanting to leave the Cabinet Secretary in the lurch, I thought this would be the right time to say I was going. I’ve done this job for five years and I don’t know that anyone has done it much longer. I’d be the first to say it’s a wonderful job, but it’s also a heavy job.”
Mr Gray, who is married with three grown-up children – a son and two daughters – and two grandchildren, started his career as a clerical officer in the civil service in 1979. He joined straight out of school – save for a six-month stint working on a farm near his home town of Linlithgow, West Lothian, where he still lives – but without any grand plans. “It was a good job to get and I was glad of it, but really my sense of public service grew as my career progressed,” he said. “As a 17-year-old boy, you’re neither mature nor very sensible – your idea of strategy is probably what you’re doing that evening. I didn’t come in with the ambition to be at the top of anything.”
Within a decade, however, he became a senior manager at the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, and by the time the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999 he oversaw the development of its IT systems.
In 2006, he was appointed Director of Primary and Community Care for the then-scottish Executive, and went on to hold a series of other directorships, before taking up his current posts in December 2013.
His five-year tenure has spanned both the Scottish independence referendum and the Brexit vote, both polarising events that have contributed to a rise in online abuse against public figures including politicians and senior civil servants.
“I do feel sad about the personalisation of some of the debate on social media,” he said. “I don’t think personalised attacks help anyone.”
With his retirement as a civil servant looming, he hopes to adopt a healthier and less stressful lifestyle. But he also welcomes the Scottish Government’s ambitions to restrict junk food deals.
He said: “The habits I need to get into – and maybe I’ll get a bit better at when I have slightly less to do – are taking a bit more exercise and eating a bit more sensibly and at sensible times of the day rather than cramming in whatever you can find at 9.30 at night when you’re already tired and don’t want to spend another half-hour making a meal.”