At half-past-ten tomorrow, Professor Malcolm Grant, chair-elect of the NHS Commissioning Board will be interviewed in a confirmation hearing by the Commons health select committee (you'll be able to watch it here).

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Andrew Lansley (saviour, liberator) has nominated UCL chair and lawyer Professor Malcolm Grant as chair-elect of the NHS Commissioning Board. He faces a confirmation hearing with the Commons health select committee at 10.30 next Tuesday morning.

It's one of those really important jobs, being as it will in charge of Comrade Sir David Nicholson And His Centralising Tendencies.

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The DH has announced the NEDs of the SHA clusters.

NHS North of England
(bringing together NHS North West, NHS Yorkshire and the Humber and NHS North East)

Chair – Kathryn Riddle
Chief executive – Ian Dalton

Non-executives:
Sir Peter Carr (Vice Chair)
Sally Cheshire (Vice Chair)
Ian Walker (Audit Chair)
Sarah Harkness
Oliver James
Alan Foster
Peter Fidler
Denis Lidstone

NHS Midlands and East

The latest DH data on referral to treatment waiting times brings out several interesting themes, and I am grateful to Dr Rob Findlay of NHSGooroo for his analysis.

Rob knows whereof he speaks. All numbers compare August 2011 with July 2011 – so it is month-on-month change during the summer months.

The special report from the Care Quality Commission, following their targeted inspection of 100 NHS hospitals on dignity and nutrition, which reveals serious failings in hospital care of elderly patients, puts nursing smack in the spotlight.

Les than half of the 100 hospitals inspected (45) were fully compliant in both dignity and nutrition. 35 complied in one or the other area; and one in five - 20 - did not comply in both areas.

The Lords Temporal and Spiritual did not come close to being convinced that there was a case for Lords Owen and Hennessey's amendment proposing the Health Bill to be referred to a special committee examining the Secretary Of State's accountability, at 330-262.

This was very similar to the figure on the more symbolic Rea amendment that the Bill should have no second reading at all: 354-220.

The Lords debate will be streamed online here from 11 am, and the vote is expected this afternoon.

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Click here for details of 'Will Lords QE2 end the political confusion over Health Bill? Party conferences leave us neither wiser nor better-informed', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

The House of Lords Health Bill debate streaming can be seen here.

The debate has been of mixed quality, with perhaps the outstanding speech from Lord Owen.

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Health economist Professor Alan Maynard dissects the direction and dentures required for CCGs to stand a chance of success.

The purchaser-provider split in the NHS has failed because PCTs have been price and quality takers rather than price and quality makers. This failure is caused by Whitehall controls and a reluctance to invest in analytical skills in most wannabe commissioning organisations.

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In this guest editorial, Irwin Brown of the Socialist Health Association offers his vote of thanks to former shadow health secretary John Healey, whose standing down from the role became public last week.

Sadly for our NHS, John Healey has chosen to do other things. For what it’s worth, many on the inside know he did an excellent job and believe he would have stayed in his post.

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