Francis report: Cameron needs to talk about the structure of NHS care as well as the culture

The Francis Report into Mid Staffordshire hospital trust will be published at 11.30am today. David Cameron will make a Commons statement this afternoon on the matter.

Yesterday I explained why Cameron should be bold today and go beyond the usual ‘lessons must be learned, procedures should be tightened’ platitudes. One of the greatest risks is that the government ends up introducing more targets and more bureaucracy with simply replace or even add to burden created by Labour which the Report will criticise today.

But as Iain Martin points out, the Mid-Staffs failure took place following huge increases in NHS spending. This isn’t a death-by-cuts story. Targets and a lack of scrutiny might be one problem, but now is also the time to stop being squeamish about systemic reforms which will tackle complacency in the NHS. The Health service still operates with a blitz-style be-thankful-for-what-you-get spirit when, as our leading article argued, independent providers do not have that luxury.