Meet the NHS Productivity Commission

Matthew Bell is a Director and jointly leads Frontier’s Public Policy Practice. 

He has been helping clients for over 25 years on the design of effective policies, including cost-benefit analysis, impact assessment, policy design, behavioural research and quantitative modelling. 

He has worked extensively on healthcare, climate change and environmental issues; as well as on industrial policy, education, housing and criminal justice. His work has focused on the UK, but he has offered expert advice to Governments in over 20 countries on all continents. 

Matthew is a member of the HM Treasury and Cabinet Office’s Evaluation and Trial Advice Panel (ETAP), which supports the design and delivery of robust, high-quality evaluation across government and oversees several large areas of government spending. ETAP is managed by the Evaluation Task Force and brings together top evaluation and experimentation experts from across the UK to provide free evaluation advice to civil servants and What Works Centres. 

From 2014 to 2017 he was the Chief Executive of the UK Committee on Climate Change. In that capacity he oversaw all the Committee’s work, including its advice to Parliament and work to influence the passage of legislation and policies relating to greenhouse gas reduction and adaptation to climate change. Earlier in his career he worked in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. He is widely recognised as an expert in using economic analysis to design effective policies. 

Matthew was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2018 for services to combatting climate change.

More than thirty years' experience of management, policy research/analysis/implementation, and consultancy in health care human resources (HRH).  
 
Member, Strategy Committee of the National Nursing Workforce Strategy, Australia; member, Nursing and Midwifery Ministerial Taskforce, Scottish government; adviser to the national Scope of Practice Review, Australia; member UK Dept of Health Global Workforce Advisory Group. 
 
Key expertise in senior roles/ consultancies with governments and international agencies (e.g WHO, OECD, ICN, ILO, ADB, World Bank). Working experience in +60 countries e.g Australia, China, Chile, India, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Portugal, Timor Leste, Vanuatu. 
 
Track record of workshop facilitation, independent analysis and commentary, and as an invited/ keynote speaker at national/ international conferences on health and health workforce issues.  
 
Jim specialises in analysing/developing and implementing HRH policies and plans nationally and internationally on the HR implications of health sector reorganisation and healthcare reform; health worker migration and labour market analysis; health workforce incentives/reward strategy; workforce planning; employment relations; regulation of health professionals; performance management; and skill mix/ extended roles. Extensive experience working with Ministries of Health and equivalent at national level. 
 
Other appointments: 
Consultant, WHO European Region; 
Adjunct Professor at the WHO Collaborating Centre, UTS, Sydney, Australia 
Editor Emeritus "Human Resources for Health", peer reviewed online journal; 
Hon. Fellow, American Academy of Nursing 
Hon. Fellow Australian College of Nursing 
Trustee AFCCT

Catherine began her career as a corporate lawyer and then worked as a legal adviser for the Competition Commission. She has worked in the health sector in England for almost a decade, holding executive roles in regulators and consultancies and was seconded into the NHS. She has led teams of lawyers, clinicians, economists, project managers and consultants.

Catherine advises digital health companies on how to partner with the NHS as well as advocating for an environment that is conducive to scaling innovation in a publicly funded healthcare system. She is the Director of the Digital Healthcare Council trade association, a board member of the leading Westminster think tank, Reform and she also hosts the Women in Healthtech Show podcast.

Ben Gershlick is Head of Performance and Planning at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

Previously he was Senior Advisor to the NHS Chief Executive between 2020 and 2024. This follows time at the Health Foundation between 2013 and 2020 where he was Senior Economist. This role led on supply-side analysis, including workforce and finance. Before this he had roles in healthcare consulting and government. He has an MSc in International Health Policy and Health Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

John has held a range of senior roles in Whitehall Departments including Director of Strategy in DHSC during the transition between the Brown and Cameron Governments, Director of Analysis at Monitor during its transformation as a result of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act and Deputy Director of Public Spending in HM Treasury responsible for NHS and adult social care spending during the Brown and Darling Chancellorships. 

John is currently director of Annapurna Strategy which provides consultancy advice to a range of public, private and not for profit clients on health policy, budgeting and public finances and organisational development in the UK and overseas.

Richard was appointed as Chief Executive of The King's Fund in January 2019, after five years as the Director of Policy. 

Before joining the Fund in January 2014, Richard was chief analyst at NHS England and previously held a number of roles at the Department of Health, including director of strategy, director of financial planning and chief economist. 

Richard initially trained as an economist and spent five years in academia before joining the Department of Health as an economic adviser. Following this he spent four years as a health care specialist at McKinsey & Co before returning to the Department of Health.

Professor Habib Naqvi MBE is Director of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, which leads work nationally on identifying and tackling ethnic health inequalities. Habib joined NHS England in 2013, where he directed the development and implementation of national programmes, including the Equality Delivery System (EDS), and the award winning NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES). Habib was awarded an MBE in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to equality and diversity in the NHS.

Rachel Wolf is a Founding Partner at Public First and leads the agency’s policy work. Rachel co-authored the Conservative Party’s Election Manifesto in 2019.

Previously an education and innovation adviser to the Prime Minister, she was also Senior Vice-President for technology company Amplify in New York City, running one of their main product divisions. She also founded and ran the New Schools Network, the charity that helped develop and implement the Government’s free schools programme. 

Rachel has written for national think tanks and most major broadsheets and regularly appears on the major broadcast shows. She began her career as an education and political adviser to the Conservative Party and was a policy adviser to Boris Johnson during his first mayoral campaign and in his earlier role as Shadow Higher Education Minister.