Major ministerial reshuffle for health

John Hutton, the health minister whose responsibilities included NHS IT, has been promoted in the post-election reshuffle.

He enters the new cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the formal title for the minister for the Cabinet Office. He will head up the department where the government’s chief information officer, Ian Watmore, works monitoring high profile government IT projects including the biggest of them all, the NHS National Programme for IT, run by Connecting for Health.

At the Department of Health, Patricia Hewitt, formerly the trade and industry secretary, takes over as health secretary from John Reid who moves to defence.

The new health secretary entered parliament in 1997 and her cv prior to that includes a stint as director of research for Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, one of the leading contractors in the National Programme for IT. She is no stranger to the digital world having served as minister for e-commerce before her elevation to cabinet level jobs.

News of Reid’s departure is not a huge surprise. He was famously disappointed to be given the health job when Alan Milburn stepped down in 2003 to spend more time with his family. His “Oh ****, not health’ oath, rumoured to be his response to the Prime Minister on being given the job, stuck with him.

However, he stamped his mark on the health portfolio putting emphasis on the policy of providing choice in the NHS, with the electronic booking component of the Choose and Book scheme playing a key part in this agenda. A veteran class warrior, Reid saw choice as a right which should be opened up to all, not a perk enjoyed by the privileged minority with private health insurance.

Hewitt will lead a ministerial team with some familar faces and some new members. Lord Warner is back as the health spokesman in the Lords and is promoted from parliamentary secretary (junior minister) to minister of state. Jane Kennedy, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, joins the department,  also as minister of state, taking a sideways move from the Department of Work and Pensions.

Caroline Flint, MP for Don Valley, and Liam Byrne, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill join the department as parliamentary secretaries. An announcement about the division of the responsibilities each minister will take is expected later.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the health minister who resigned over the Iraq War, is back in the government, though not associated with health.  He becomes Lords spokesman at the Department for Work and Pensions.  While in exile he has been chair of the NHS National Patient Safety Agency.