No ‘ex gratia payments’ for CfH boss

Ministers have said there are no plans to give outgoing Connecting for Health-boss Richard Granger a golden handshake, when he officially steps down as head of the DH IT agency. 

In response to a parliamentary question health minister Ben Bradshaw said "There are no plans to make any ex gratia payments to the Director General of NHS Connecting for Health."

Fellow health minister, Ivan Lewis, meanwhile confirmed this month that standard civil service code rules would apply to his future employment. These would prevent him working for a company with interests in NHS IT.

Lewis said the civil servant rules on future employment "would prevent him working for a company with interests in NHS IT, unless a special dispensation were granted".

Granger announced in June that after five years at the helm he would leave the CfH post, responsible for the £12.4bn NHS IT programme. No replacement has been appointed.

In response to a separate parliamentary question Bradshaw said that the report of the investigation into the Computer Sciences Corporation data centre failure in July 2006, which left 80 NHS trusts in the West Midlands and North West without access to IT systems, is expected to be published by the end of October.