The plan to introduce league tables is a simplistic, retrograde gimmick that will demoralise NHS staff – and sideline their incredible work

• Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor

Seriously, Wes Streeting? After 14 wretched years of Tory austerity, stealth privatisation , draconian outsourcing, the Brexit staff drain and the horror and trauma of Covid from which – as you know – staff haven’t remotely recovered, the big NHS plan is to be … naming and shaming ? Complete with inflammatory language that’s designed to scapegoat staff, such as the bad managers you’ve branded the NHS’s “ guilty secret ”? Do you genuinely think this is constructive?

At a point when Ofsted – having contributed to the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry – has finally rowed back from its absurdly blunt tool of one-word school inspection ratings, it beggars belief that the new health secretary thinks hospital league tables will help the NHS. Streeting insists the new public rankings are a necessary way of stamping out poor performance. He wants hospitals judged on quantifiable factors such as A&E waits, cancer care and the size of their budget deficits. Trusts will be publicly ranked from best to worst, with the CEOs of the worst offenders facing dismissal. Meanwhile, the best-performing trusts will be rewarded with extra money to buy new equipment or repair facilities, further skewing the playing field.

Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking : Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic