The Department of Health faced difficulties selling the coalition’s NHS reforms because it didn’t look like it was listening to the public, departing director general of communications Sian Jarvis has told CSW.

“We had a big consultation process,” she said, “but I think that because it went quite quickly – quite rightly: any government coming in wants to do things, they want to make their mark – perhaps we didn’t take as much time as we might have done to actually make people feel that they’ve been listened to.”

She also said of Andrew Lansley: “I think he felt that he had consulted, but the big difference is that when you’re in opposition, it’s very different from being in government; and once you get into government, I’m afraid the clock starts ticking at that point. You can’t presume that anything you said or conversations that you had [previously] would count for anything.”

Read the full interview here

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Written by CSW