Keir Starmer dramatically abolished NHS England today, with Ministers branding it “the world’s largest quango”, as he launched an assault on the “flabby, unfocused and over-cautious” state. The Mail has more.
The PM used a speech to deliver a damning verdict on the performance of the public sector, saying huge expansion in numbers had not worked.
He announced that NHS England will be abolished altogether, saying it would bring health provision back under “democratic control”.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting had already declared he would dramatically curb the body – which ministers have labelled the “world’s largest quango”.
NHS England is the central bureaucracy that controls more than £190 billion a year of funding for health and has 15,000 staff.
Its functions will be taken over by the Department of Health over the next two years, with headcount cut by 9,000 – although it is not clear how many of those will be deployed elsewhere.
Mr Streeting said there would be “hundreds of millions of pounds” of savings.
The NHS England Chief Executive and National Medical Director both resigned in recent weeks as the scale of the overhaul became clear.
It effectively reverses a huge reorganisation pushed through under the Coalition. It was welcomed by Tories including Jeremy Hunt, although he pointed out that Mr Streeting previously ruled out “top down reorganisation”.
NHS bosses voiced caution, saying there will be “disruption” and patient care must be “prioritised”.
Sir Keir told the audience in Hull that Government was employing “more people than we’ve employed for decades”.
“Yet look around the country, do you see good value everywhere? Because I don’t,” he said. “I actually think it’s weaker than it’s ever been.”
Sir Keir said he believed in “active government” but that did not mean it should be “bigger”.
While being careful to praise civil servants, Sir Keir complained that Whitehall in general has not managed to improve frontline services.
However, the intervention has already drawn a furious response from unions who branded it “unrealistic” and insulting. Ministers have been playing down suggestions of wide scale jobs cuts, arguing that efficiency is the real goal.
No 10 has been forced to deny that the initiative has been nicknamed ‘Project Chainsaw’ internally.
Downing Street said the reference to Trump adviser Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw to represent his cuts to government spending was “juvenile”.
Sir Keir said abolishing NHS England will reduce “duplication”, saving money that can then be spent on frontline services.
Answering a question from a cancer patient on how the decision would improve the situation, the premier said: “Amongst the reasons we are abolishing it is because of the duplication.
“So, if you can believe it, we’ve got a communications team in NHS England, we’ve got a communications team in the health department of government; we’ve got a strategy team in NHS England, a strategy team in the government department. We are duplicating things that could be done once.
“If we strip that out, which is what we are doing today, that then allows us to free up that money to put it where it needs to be, which is the front line.”
He added that the Government wanted to push power to frontline workers “and away from the bureaucracy which often holds them up”.
In a statement, Mr Streeting said: “This is the final nail in the coffin of the disastrous 2012 reorganisation, which led to the longest waiting times, lowest patient satisfaction, and most expensive NHS in history.”
How will it save hundreds of millions if all the overpaid quangocrats keep their jobs and are just moved elsewhere? Something doesn’t add up here.
Worth reading in full.
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It seems there is a huge amount of (reasonable) disagreement within the medical community on the safety (and efficacy) of the vaccines. Given my risk of covid is negligible – I might wait until at least some sort of consensus emerges. Of course others will do their own personal risk assessments – but as a 50 year old, 1 year into a ‘pandemic’ I know enough about the virus and as little about the vaccine that I’m happy to have the virus (and probably did anyway before they were testing).
Additionally, the idea that having the virus is some sort of ‘poor relation’ to being vaccinated – given how little testing we have done of the vaccines – I find risible.
Totally agree. I’m more than happy to wait until the clinical trials are completed, and even then, I think my own immune system will manage just fine.
I’m certainly not ‘happy to have the virus’, given my health issues (although I think my underlying immunity remains quite good).
However, for me, taking the vaccine would be supporting the current witchcraft rather than real science. A betrayal.
This is not because I believe that the vaccine is definitely unsafe, but simply that safety cannot be established within this timeframe, and going along with the panicdemic scenario is a betrayal of basic protocols involving serious testing of drugs. The risk profile just doesn’t warrant it; if this was about Ebola, it might.
Despite the advertising puffery, the vaccines aren’t much of an achievement, with an absolute risk reduction (the real-life kicker) of less than 1%. (Note how little the AR figures are mentioned) And, it seems, truth told, the government doesn’t believe the puffery about limiting transmission, either, with the local thug force still beating up old ladies to enforce their bollocks NPIs. What a shit-shower!
Meanwhile, Ivermectin has a promising profile of prophylactic effectiveness – rather better than for vaccines – but is a minority pursuit.
So we have more and more witchcraft and less and less science.
We’ve tested the vaccine on 20 million people. How many more do you need?
I just hope you are one of the lucky ones who gets mild Covid.
I’ve probably already had it. It was so mild I didn’t know it but everyone else in my family did. Even if I didn’t, its statistically likely to be mild for my age/health cohort – but life’s a risk
I think it’s long terms effects I would be interested in wrt vaccines – the high selection pressure for a mutation that avoids the vaccine (but maybe not so much my generalist response). I’m not an expert, but for a known very mild virus, I’ll take my chances with it rather than a vaccine with such a short amount of testing.
I’m not worried either about the virus or the vaccine – both are probably fine. I just don’t care that much, there’s more to life than shitting yourself about either a sniffle or some anti-sniffle potion straight out of the lab
Ok EMA.
Show us the detailed data supporting your claim.
I won’t bother waiting.
The EMA along with MHRA and CDC are poachers turned gamekeepers, Big Pharma regulates itself.
The very notion of a vaccine for the general public for something with an IFR of 0.23% is nuts. To have it forced onto the public under emergency use is potentially criminal.
The ‘blood clot’ concern is not limited to the AZ vaccine it applies to Pfiezer and Moderna. It seems that a major contributor to deaths ‘with’ covid was the pneumonia combined with blood clotting caused by the wild virus. As all three vaccines in effect produce virus spike manufacturing cells all over the body including the brain, its not unwarranted to ask the question if its been tested and found safe regarding this issue.
The sort of ‘anecdotal’ evidence dismissed when evaluating Ivermectin of HCQ now apparently being used in defence of the vaccines by the regulators , just won’t wash.
“The very notion of a vaccine for the general public for something with an IFR of 0.23% is nuts. “
Like the flu vaccine then.
Healthy people are under no pressure to get flu vaccines
The only clots are in the European Commission