Simon Stevens

Simon Laurence Stevens, Baron Stevens of Birmingham (born 4 August 1966) is Chair of Cancer Research UK and an independent member of the House of Lords.

He joined the NHS in 1988, and worked at the Department of Health and 10 Downing Street, as well as internationally, including in Guyana, Malawi, and in the United States.

After university, Stevens first worked in Guyana, and then from 1988 to 1997 as a healthcare manager in the UK and internationally.

He started his NHS career on the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme at Shotley Bridge General Hospital, the largest employer in Consett, County Durham, after the closure of the steel works.

After a spell in Congo and Malawi, he became general manager for a large NHS psychiatric hospital outside Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and ran community mental health services for North Tyneside and Northumberland.

He was then appointed group manager of Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals in London before moving to New York City Health Department.

Stevens served as a senior government policy adviser for seven years from 1997 to 2004: first to successive Secretaries of State for Health (Frank Dobson and Alan Milburn) at the UK Department of Health, and then as senior policy adviser in the Number 10 Policy Unit to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A former member of the Labour Party, Stevens was an elected councillor in Brixton in the London Borough of Lambeth from 1998 to 2002.

He was also an elected Labour councillor for Brixton, in the London Borough of Lambeth 1998–2002, though for at least the past decade he has not been a member of any political party.

He was closely associated with the development of the NHS Plan 2000.

Their son was born on Christmas Day 2003 at St Thomas' Hospital and their daughter in 2008.

He lists his hobbies as family, offshore sailing, books and "cooking without recipes".

He competes in the Rolex Fastnet Offshore Race.

He is reportedly ambivalent about some contemporary art.

He served as a senior executive at the UnitedHealth Group from 2004 to 2014, an American health care company.

He was a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics from 2004 to 2008.

Stevens was appointed as Chief Executive of NHS England after a worldwide competitive search, and served under Prime Ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

During his tenure as Chief Executive, Stevens was annually ranked the most influential person in UK health.

Upon the announcement of his retirement as head of the NHS, he was hailed by the Health Service Journal as the most important figure in NHS history since Aneurin Bevan.

On 5 July 2021, he became a crossbench Member of the House of Lords before stepping down from NHS England after seven years on 31 July 2021.

He was succeeded by his deputy, Amanda Pritchard.

Simon Stevens was born in Birmingham, England, the son of a Baptist minister and a university administrator.

He was educated at a state comprehensive, St Bartholomew's School in Newbury, Berkshire, and won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he was elected president of the Oxford Union.

His friends at Balliol reportedly ranged from Green activist Rupert Read to Boris Johnson, who credited Stevens with Johnson's own election as Oxford Union president.

Stevens later received an MBA from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and was a Harkness Fellow at Columbia University, New York.

His wife, Maggie, is a public health specialist from New York City, and board member of the West London Synagogue.

From 2004 to 2014, Sir Simon was a senior executive at UnitedHealth Group.

Initially appointed president of UnitedHealth Europe, he became CEO of UnitedHealthcare's $30 billion Medicare business, and then corporate Executive Vice President and president of its global health businesses spanning the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

He also was a director of Brazil's largest hospital group AMIL.

He was instrumental in establishing an academic institute to publish information about the costs of US health care.

These data showed that - contrary to prior research mainly using public Medicare data - cost differences in the working age population were often because of market pricing power by hospitals, rather than because of excessive use of services by patients.

He also served on the boards of various non-profits, including the Minnesota Historical Society; the Minnesota Opera; and the Medicare Rights Center (New York), as well as the King's Fund and the Nuffield Trust.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Fund of New York.

and Chair of Cancer Research UK.

As the NHS England CEO, Stevens has been directly accountable to Parliament for management of £150 billion of annual NHS funding.

He frequently gives evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee, and other Parliamentary committees.

He has used the statutory independence of NHS England to speak openly about NHS funding and reform.

He served as the eighth Chief Executive of NHS England from 2014 to 2021.

As of 2020, Stevens was paid a salary of between £195,000 and £199,000 by NHS England and each year he has opted for a voluntary £20,000 pay cut.

According to Fraser Nelson, hiring Stevens back to run NHS England was one of the cleverest moves that David Cameron made because he "knows more about NHS problems and market solutions than any man alive".