Knives are out for NHS managers. The case of Lucy Letby – the nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six other infants – has become yet another opportunity for NHS loathers to expostulate against it. “NHS management is a bullying, incompetent cult,” proclaims a particularly virulent assault in the Daily Telegraph, ending: “If its managers remain untouchable, how long before there’s another Lucy Letby?”
As I wrote after Letby’s conviction, this was a horrifyingly freakish criminal case. The “lessons must be learned” impulse risks becoming a general stampede against NHS administrators. Of course, the inadequate should be removed, but beware cheap rabble-rousers looking for “savings” by cutting feather-bedded public bureaucrats, pitting them against saintly frontline doctors and nurses.
