This week Sally Davies, the first woman to hold the post of chief medical officer, appeared before the health select committee, which is investigating the government’s public health reforms.
A heavy winter with the flu convinced her that the UK’s public health structures needed to change. She said the system managed but she was worried about how it would cope with, say, a big E. coli outbreak. The new national public health service, Public Health England (PHE), would, she claimed, bring together the disparate parts of the public health system and lead to better intelligence, surveillance and information gathering. Currently the Health Protection Agency is responsible for infections, cancer registry for cancers and Public Health Observatories for producing public health statistics.
Sitting alongside the CMO was Anita Marsland, PHE’s managing director. How much independence will her service have from the government? Ms Marsland, the former chief executive of Knowsley primary care trust, explained that ministers wanted oversight because public health was akin to ‘defence of the realm’. But she admitted there were professional fears that locating it within the Department of Health might undermine its ability give expert advice. An executive agency, she argued, was a sensible compromise. The service will be part of its home department but have an ‘operational distinctiveness’.
MPs also wanted to know more about the role of directors of public health. How will the government ensure they are properly qualified? The public health profession feels very strongly that there should be statutory regulation but Ms Davies said the government had not decided. Will, inquired the MPs, directors be ‘underlings’ or will they report directly to the council chief executive? Ms Davies said she could not mandate councils but she expected they would be senior officers and report directly to chief executives. She added that a policy paper due to be published this week would throw some more light on the issue.
Later, Alan Maryon-Davis, professor of public health and EHN columnist, reminded the MPs that PHE will still be a branch of government and the people working in it will still be civil servants. Only time will tell if they will have the freedom to speak truth to power.
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Tags: Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, Environmental Health News, General environmental health
