Further to our recent mention of the gaiety that new Conservative Health Select Committee members Nadine Dorries and David Tredinnick promise bring to the world of health policy, we may have a front-bench find in Health Minister Simon Burns.

There is the kernel of a good idea in ex-PM Tony Blair's advice to PM David Cameron, as reported by The Guardian.

The good idea in question is that government is so different from opposition - indeed, from anything else you encounter - that an incoming administration should properly have informal conversations with the outgoing government about its experiences, aims and the cultural challenges of the civil service

FT regulator Monitor looks set to become the NHS economic regulator envisaged in the Conservative pre-election health policy.

Its new chair Steve Bundred has been making significant noises about taking the assets of FTs off balance sheet – potentially, the single biggest step yet proposed towards the privatisation of the NHS.

Good morning. As we re-enter daily reality (or what passes for it) post-Confed, having come home to gardens looking more savannah than suburbia, we will wash up a few bits from the conference shortly.

Message Number One: he wants to stay. The clock has definitely stopped on ‘NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson (and counting)’. So if Lansley wants to get rid of him, there will be trouble. That was the first message of Nicholson’s characteristically energetic speech to close the 2010 NHS Confederation conference in Liverpool.

Message Number Two: we got no hard news of details or deadlines - the introduction of the new system is going to be a gradual “transition”, over “the next two to three years”.

The HPI interview with Dr Peter Brambleby, Joint Director of Public Health, NHS Croydon and Croydon Council, is now online.

Previous instalments in this interview series:
Nigel Edwards, acting CE, NHS Confederation
Andrew Donald, chief operating officer, NHS Birmingham East and North PCT
Michael Sobanja, CE, NHS Alliance

Good morning.

Is this an omen for the fate of Sir David Nicholson, former communist party member, who today addresses the NHS Confederation conference?

There were various digs at Nicholson in Health Secretary Andrew Lansley CBE MP's speech yesterday. Nicholson will have spotted them.

It will be interesting to see whether he chooses to respond.

Did I hear that right? In response to an audience question, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley CBE MP told the NHS Confederation conference that the independent commissioning board would negotiate all contracts for primary care?

So that's every GP practice, every pharmacy, every community midwifery service, every dentistry contract?

About 8,000 contracts?

So there is effectively no job left for PCTs. And the independent commissioning board is going to have to be very big. Which involves management cost, at a time of attempting to take 1/3 off the 2008-9 management budget.

Hello from Confed. You will have seen the latest dose of Maynard Doctrine.

As ever, much to say and little time. Word is that July 5 will not see the publication of the White Paper: Treasury have sent it back refusing to sanction the proposed financial governance arrangements for GPs.

I’m up the top in the nosebleed seats. Lansley looks like a ghost on the screen.

The Health Secretary’s speech is online and unmitigated here.

Morning.

So if commissioning is going to reshape services and patterns of use, that will change things for secondary care, won’t it?

So we should ask some people in secondary care about it, shouldn’t we?

The first view from secondary care comes from Timothy Heymann, reading in health management, Imperial College Business School and consultant physician, Kingston Hospital.

Previous instalments:
Nigel Edwards, acting CE, NHS Confederation