By Henry Featherstone, Bill Moyes and Paul Corrigan.

Writing for think tank Policy Exchange, the architects of the Government’s Foundation Trust programme call for a wholesale change in the culture of the NHS. Currently hampered by tight central control, which stifles innovation and effective delivery of services, their report argues that Ministers and Parliament still assume that the only approach is to exert managerial authority and issue top down instructions.

The report, Future Foundations, is co-authored by Paul Corrigan, former health advisor to Tony Blair and Health Secretaries Alan Milburn and John Reid, and Bill Moyes, who was until recently the Chairman and Chief Executive of the foundation trust regulator Monitor. The report argues that the continuing obsession at the top of Government with ‘being seen to do something’ means that ministers think and act if they were responsible for almost all significant operational decisions, in effect undermining the independence that was at the heart of creating Foundation Trusts.