GGI National NHS NED Development Programme: Peer to Peer Weekly Meeting with Baroness Glenys Thornton | 14 January 2022

As part of its mission to promote good governance, GGI will host these facilitated, weekly virtual meetings to give NHS non-executive directors an opportunity to share their concerns, challenges and ideas as we rethink the future of health and social care. The goal is to collectively think about the role NEDs play as part of the controlling mind of their organisations, to discuss immediate safeguarding issues and to ensure we all learn from this experience to assure better outcomes for citizens in the future. If you would like to join this meeting, please email events@good-governance.org.uk.

ABOUT

Host: Professor Andrew Corbett-Nolan, Chief Executive, Good Governance Institute

Chair: Dr Usman Khan, GGI Special Advisor, Good Governance Institute

In Conversation with: Baroness Glenys Thornton, Non-Executive Director, Whittington Health NHS Trust, Member of the House of Lords and Shadow Health Minister

'Understanding the Health & Care Bill – An Insiders Perspective’

• What were the drivers for the development of the Health & Care Bill?
• What is the current state of play with the Health & Care Bill?
• How is the Health & Care Bill likely to impact on Trust Board Working?
• How might the balance between central control and local autonomy be impacted by the Health Bill?
• How might posterity view the Health and Care Bill?

About Glenys

Baroness Glenys Thornton was the chief executive of The Young Foundation from June 2015 to October 2017 and continues to support its work as a senior fellow. She is currently a non-executive director at the Whittington Hospital.

Glenys grew up in inner-city Bradford, attended a local comprehensive and then studied politics and government at the London School of Economics, where she is now a governor. She has previously been a council member of Oxford Brookes University and served as a communications adviser to successive vice-chancellors of Cambridge University.

Glenys has had a career in the voluntary, co-operative and private sectors for over 30 years, starting at Gingerbread, then the Citizens Advice Bureau and then as project director at the Institute for Community Studies and Mutual Aid Centre from 1978 to 1981. She left the ICS to become political secretary of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society, joining the public affairs team of the Co-operative Wholesale Society upon their merger in 1985 and working there until 1992. In 1993 Glenys became the general secretary of the Fabian Society.

A feminist activist from LSE days, she has worked within the Labour Party to ensure gender balance and still mentors many women seeking public office.

She has been a member of the Co-op since she was 16 years old. Glenys founded what became Social Enterprise UK in 2001 and chaired the organisation until January 2008. She also founded the all-party parliamentary group for social enterprise.

In 2010 she became one of three patrons of SEUK and in that capacity Glenys has been active in building what is now the Social Economy. Over the years Glenys has been a trustee of Action for Children, Jamie Oliver’s 15 Foundation, Training for Life, and of course The Young Foundation. She was a board member of the IdEA, the local government improvement agency, from 1999 to 2008.

As a backbench peer Glenys was involved in charity, social innovation and social enterprise debates for 10 years. It is possible she was the first person to use the term social enterprise in Parliament. She helped to put through the community interest company right to request legislation and the Social Value Act.

Glenys ran her own communications company from 2001 to 2008 and stood down when she was appointed health minister in the House of Lords. She also had responsibility for women and equalities in the Lords and helped to put through the Equality Act of 2010.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

This meeting is by invitation and is open to all NHS Non-Executives Directors, Chairs and Associate Non-Executive Directors of NHS Providers. Others may attend by special invitation.

For further details, comments, questions and suggestions please contact: events@good-governance.org.uk