BMA meeting: Doctors call for professional regulation of managers to hold them to account

Managers in the NHS should be subject to a regime of professional regulation so that they can be held accountable for their actions and omissions, the BMA’s annual meeting voted today.

In spite of doubts expressed by Mark Porter, chairman of council of the BMA, the annual representative meeting carried by a large majority a motion favouring such regulation, proposed by Peter Holden, a Derbyshire GP and member of council.

Holden argued that the introduction of managers into the NHS—“most, if not all, without any instinctive, institutional corporate code of professional ethics and behaviour backed up by a formal professional disciplinary and registration regime”—had created a toxic working environment.

“Not even in Communist China did they have managers overruling doctors in the operation of …