Health service chief critical of Covid-19 ‘Protect the NHS’ slogan

The head of NHS England was critical of the government’s slogan urging people to “protect the NHS” at the start of the Covid pandemic, amid concerns it would stop people coming forward for much-needed treatment.

Simon Stevens, who led the NHS until July 2021, was one of the slogan’s “greatest critics” and was not involved in the government discussion that led to the phrase being deployed.

The revelation has emerged in a new book on the health service, which says that senior health figures were soon attempting to unpick the potential damage it caused.

“It was a tremendously powerful slogan,” writes journalist Isabel Hardman in Fighting for Life: The Twelve Battles That Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future.

“It was popular in government – but not universally so. In fact, one of its greatest critics was Simon Stevens. Stevens wasn’t on the calls where [government advisers] came up with ‘Protect the NHS’, and initially he complained in private that it gave the impression that the public was there for the health service – not the health service being there for the public.

“Either way, the focus quickly became about the importance of ‘protecting the NHS’. But there was never a clear definition of what it was being protected from.”

Later in 2020, Lord Stevens referred to his concerns about the slogan, writing: “Rather than say ‘Protect the NHS’, health service staff prefer to say: ‘Help us help you’.”

Senior NHS figures also attempted to battle against the slogan from the spring of 2020, urging patients to come forward as normal.

In April, Sir Stephen Powis, the NHS national medical director, said at a press conference: “If you have any emergency condition, whether it’s a sick child, whether it’s a mother, or a mother in pregnancy who’s worried about the movements of the baby, you should be seeking emergency services just as you always have done.

“They are there for you and although we are focusing on coronavirus, it’s important that we also continue to focus on other emergency conditions.”

The concerns of the former head of NHS England have emerged as former health secretary Matt Hancock prepares to be questioned by the UK Covid-19 public inquiry this week. He has already faced scrutiny over his response to the pandemic after the leak of about 100,000 WhatsApp messages earlier this year which he exchanged with ministers and aides.

Hancock is likely to face questions on why the government had not adequately prepared for the stockpiling and distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the face of a non-influenza pandemic or for mass diagnostic testing.

The hearing was told last week that some social care providers ran out of PPE despite Sir Christopher Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, insisting that “we never nationally ran out of PPE”.

When challenged over the statement by Lady Hallett, the chairwoman of the inquiry, he responded: “There were huge pressures on PPE and we had, as I said, significant challenges getting PPE to the right place. That’s different from it having run out nationally.”

Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England until September 2019, told the inquiry last week there was not sufficient resilience in the NHS to properly cope with the effect of a pandemic. She said: “You can’t get a good outcome if you don’t have resilience in the public’s health, resilience in the public health system – it has been disinvested in.

“On comparator data … we were at the bottom of the table on number of doctors, number of beds, number of ITUs [intensive therapy units], number of ventilators.”

Former prime minister David Cameron and ex-chancellor George Osborne gave evidence to the inquiry last week, defending the austerity drive they imposed on the country.

Osborne said he “completely” rejected that a depleted health system was the consequence of austerity and argued the country would have been more exposed to a pandemic if the public finances had not been on a sustainable footing.

Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, will also appear before the inquiry this week. Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s chief medical officer who resigned in April 2020 after breaking lockdown rules with two trips to her second home, will also give evidence.