NHS England is being abolished under plans announced by Keir Starmer today aimed at centralising control of the national health service.
The arms-length body is being axed to “cut bureaucracy” and bring management of the health service “back into democratic control”, the prime minister said. The creation of NHS England in 2012 by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government “created burdensome layers of bureaucracy without any clear lines of accountability”.
“It’s hardly surprising that ministers want more control” of the NHS given its importance to voters, said the BBC‘s chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman. But there is also a “broader philosophical point” being made, “that significant decisions ought to be made by those with democratic authority, that is to say the government”.
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“As soon as Wes Streeting took charge”, said the broadcaster‘s health correspondent Nick Triggle, it was clear that “NHS England was on borrowed time”. Streeting shares the sentiments of Tory health ministers of yesteryear who “privately expressed frustration that the single-biggest part of their brief was outside of their control”.
Whisper it quietly, says The i Paper‘s Katy Balls, but has Starmer and his government “gone a bit Tory”? Today’s announcement follows a series of moves that have left some “wondering whether Starmer has swerved slightly to the right”.
In a post on X, Tory peer and former health minister James Bethell said: “I wish we’d had had the guts to do this.” A former Tory government adviser told Balls that “it’s the kind of thing that if we went near everyone gets hysterical and says we are privatising the NHS and becoming the US, but Wes might have a shot”.
That said, “Streeting is taking a big risk”, said ITV’s political editor Robert Peston. Streeting “has ordered a 50% reduction in NHS England’s 15,300 headcount straight away” before the body is wound down in two years time and “managing job cuts while trying to improve NHS performance” will be no easy task.
What next?
That “only Labour can deliver this reform is borne out in polling and something that Streeting and his advisers are deeply aware of”, said The Spectator‘s Isabel Hardman. But once the health service is back in house, “it really is Labour’s problem”.
“So the government must really think that it can reform the NHS properly, as it will have to answer directly for any failure.”
