NHS England was introduced in 2012 as a reform layout by former Health Secretary Andrew Langley to be the regulator of the NHS (National Health Service). Its purpose was to give the NHS greater independence from the politics in government. The organisation runs the day to day handling of the NHS and holds the ability to set policy and decide how NHS budgets are spent.
The BBC’s chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman has called Starmer’s announcement ‘a significant and complex reorganisation of the health service’.
The catalyst for this decision may be one of long-foreseen animosity over the fiscal sustainability of the NHS and its surrounding framework. These events also follow the recent announcement that Amanda Pritchard, the Chief Executive of NHS England would be stepping down at the end of the month.
Kier Starmer’s Government has been recognised for making big political decisions since coming into power. Starmer’s rhetoric has reflected wide anxiety over the stability of the NHS, including long patient waiting lists, budgetary inefficiency, and the need for reinstalling what he calls the ‘family doctor’.
Starmer has called NHS England an ‘arms length body’ and aims to bring ‘management of the NHS back into democratic control’. However, after the announcement former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt expressed concerns over replacing ‘bureaucratic over-centralisation with political over-centralisation’.
The government have conveyed that they hope this transformation will happen over the next two years, leaving space for an inevitable period of consultations with unions over the effect this will have on NHS England staff.
Union representatives have stated Starmer’s announcement as chaotic. Unison’s General Secretary Christina McAnea asserted that ‘The way the news of the axing has been handled is nothing short of shambolic’.
In an interview with Victoria Derbyshire, the BBC Health Editor Hugh Pym, noted that abolishing NHS England may potentially cost 9000 jobs over the next two years, 'freeing up' £500M in expenditure. However, the amount of money that this move will save, and the level of monetary efficiency that the NHS will gain is uncertain at this stage.
The Prime Minister has defended his position to end ‘the vast array of quangos’ which have facilitated the ‘two layers of bureaucracy’ in NHS management.
In the coming weeks, we should see further details on how this decision will affect NHS patients, and how the government is going to reorganise NHS England into the Department of Health and Social Care.