NI health: Stalemate catastrophic for health service, says former leader

Northern Ireland’s lack of power-sharing government for four of the past six years has been catastrophic for the health service, a former chief of the Health and Social Care Board has said.

John Compton said that a functioning system relied on political leadership.

It comes after a week in which the health service has been described as being under unprecedented pressure.

Most health trusts have cancelled some non-urgent operations to increase bed capacity.

It has also been reported that an inquiry is taking place into eight deaths after ambulance delays while an emergency department nurse told BBC News NI that his ward resembled a war zone.

BBC News NI health correspondent Marie-Louise Connolly described the past week as hellishly difficult for health care staff across Northern Ireland.

Mr Compton stepped down as leader at the Health and Social Care Board in 2014 after 40 years of working in health care.

The organisation, which arranged health and social care services, shut down last year, with its functions coming under the responsibility of the Department of Health.

In 2011, his report, Transforming Your Care, spelled out major reform for Northern Ireland’s health service.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday with Steven Rainey, he said the political stalemate was creating a long-term deficit of services.

“We’ve had an assembly for two of the last six years, I mean that is fairly catastrophic for the health service because we are a tax-funded system that relies on political leadership,” he said.

“When you don’t have political leadership, you don’t get decisions and when you don’t get decisions, then you get the outworkings of what you see today in our health service.”

Mr Compton warned that if change was not implemented soon, the system will continue to operate as it has for the last four to six weeks.

There has been no functioning government since February after the DUP withdrew from the executive in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Previously, government collapsed between 2017 and 2020 after a split between the two largest power-sharing parties Sinn Féin and the DUP.

On Wednesday, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris will hold roundtable talks with five of the largest parties at Stormont.

The deadline to restore an executive is 19 January, or legally he will be under a duty to call an assembly election within 12 weeks.

Mr Compton said during this discussion, politicians should ask for a transition fund to reform the health care system.

“If you’re trying to change it and reform it… you also need to have that ability to make that change over a three to five-year period,” he said.

“I would really encourage a debate about a transition fund to enable proper reform and then to get back into Stormont where you’re taking those decisions and you’re using that transition fund to drive that reform.”