This analysis explores how the Health and Social Care Act 2012 has placed requirements on NHS commissioners to engage in both collaboration and competition. Yet there is no indication that the two are compatible. Competition has primacy over collaboration despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Bob Hudson is Visiting Professor in Public Policy in the Centre for Public Policy and Health at the University of Durham, a position he has held since 2004. From 1995 until 2004 he was Principal Research Fellow at the Nuffield Institute for Health at the University of Leeds, and held earlier lecturing positions (in social policy) at the University of Durham and New College Durham. His main areas of work have been in public sector policy, and especially health and local government – topics on which he has undertaken national research and published widely in the academic and trade press. He has served as a local councillor, chaired local voluntary groups and worked as a special advisor to the House of Commons Children’s Select Committee.
