Matthew joined the NHS Confederation as its chief executive in June 2021, having been chief executive of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) for 15 years.  During his tenure, Matthew transformed the RSA into a global institution, with 30,000 fellows and a high profile and influential research programme.  

Before the RSA, Matthew was chief adviser on political strategy to Prime Minister Tony Blair and he also ran the Institute for Public Policy Research for 5 years. He is a widely known commentator on policy, politics and public service reform and regularly appears on national media programmes, including as a panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze.  He was series editor for the Thames and Hudson ‘Big Ideas’ books and his own book ‘Do we need to work?’ was published in 2021. He was commissioned by the Conservative government in 2016 to carry out an independent review into modern employment practices.  Matthew presents the podcast series ‘Health on the Line’ (for NHS Confederation).