Keir Starmer says he will abolish NHS England as part of public sector reform plans – live updates

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx29lrl826rt

by Half_A_

40 comments

  1. How many people are going to read the headline and get angry because they don’t know NHS England is separate to the NHS.

  2. Daily Mail: CRUEL Socialist Two-Tier Keir ABOLISHES the NHS 

  3. Key takeaway from this is: “Keir Starmer is making the case that this will avoid excessive duplication between NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care.”

    Lets see how this pans out… Hopefully this makes it harder for other governments to scrap / privatise the NHS

  4. This will infuriate my reform voting mother as she won’t be able to screech about the overpaid NHS management blob.

  5. If this is the case, what is he going to replace it with?

    I’m down for accepting that plenty of government and public bodies are stacked with management that are overpaid and perhaps the function of the body can be done more efficiently, but it’s definitely the case that NHSE was doing something of use in there. How is he going to reorganise the NHS to accommodate those tasks without passing the administrative burden to staff who should be providing care?

    Edit: the scrolling updates seem to imply this will be folded back into the department of health and social care, which is probably a sensible solution given this means the health sec will be responsible and accountable for the provision of services as he can be questioned by opposition MPs about things more directly.

  6. I almost had a heart attack when I read that headline. But this could be a very good thing

  7. > Keir Starmer taxes AXE to health service and ABOLISHES THE NHS

    The gutter press headlines tomorrow, probably.

  8. This is good news, so watch this post getting downvoted to hell like any other good news post in this sub.

  9. The amount of people who don’t know the difference between the NHS and NHS England scares me.

  10. Can someone explain to me, an idiot, how this will affect healthcare going forward?

  11. Head line set up to rule the right and get the pitchfork brigade going

  12. They worded the headline that way on purpose didn’t they? Makes it seem like Starmer is scrapping the NHS all together if you didn’t know NHS England was it’s own separate thing

  13. Good news imo. Handing over management of the NHS to an unaccountable body was a bad move from the start and it hasn’t worked well. It took away democratic accountability for decisions that have a huge impact on people’s lives. I thought politicians were too comfortable to take that accountability back- glad I was wrong.

  14. As someone who’s employed by the NHS but reports findings to NHS England, I’m not entirely sure how to feel about this. NHSE is a bureaucratic nightmare to deal with and some of the demands they place on Trusts are INSANE, but at the same time a lot of those demands actively change the way day to day care is delivered for the better.

    There’s no doubt there’s room for a more streamlined system though.

  15. Can someone who is actually familiar with the structure of the NHS and NHS England give an ELI5 of what this actually means?

    He’s obviously not scrapping the NHS, but I’m confused on what he *is* planning? What is NHS England and how does getting rid of it bring the health service back under democratic control?

  16. READ BEFORE COMMENTING

    NHS England is NOT the same as “The NHS in England”.

    NHS England is the administration board that oversees the NHS in England, created in 2012. Scrapping it will mean NHS oversight goes back to the health department.

  17. To anyone thinking this is a massive step – this won’t meaningfully impact you in any way.

    It is just changing the structure of bureaucracy in the NHS. NHS England is mostly project managers and the like. They don’t do any patient care. Merging it back with the department for health is sensible and also not particularly radical.

  18. I hope they use this to make the NHS more workable for patients. Get GP surgeries operating with modern tech. No more 8am rush for appointments or having to hand delivery repeat prescription requests.

  19. If they can now sort NHS procurement as well, that would be fantastic.

  20. Good riddance.

    If you’ve never worked behind the scenes on health policy you’re probably unaware of what NHSE actually does. The thing is, so were most of the people working there. It got even worse with the mergers of NHSX and NHS Improvement into NHSE. You just had this accumulation of civil servants who had survived previous rounds of redundancies and has been mushed together from a load of predecessor organisations.

    It’s a weird middle layer of bureaucracy between DHSC and the regional/local boards that determine how care should be commissioned.

  21. Most shocking is how everyone involved actually found out through the media

    No decency to tell them privately before telling the media

  22. NHS England is the managerial body that overseas the NHS which is split into hundreds of trusts

    By taxing nhse, the department of health will have to take over. And increase it’s staff in order to do the same job. Presumably the same staff being fired from nhse otherwise it’s going to be very chaotic.
    The government will therefore have significantly more control over the NHS.
    Absolutely terrifying as this will essentially end the ability for medical decisions to be made independent of government, and the gov already has alot of control.

    Women and minorities at serious risk.
    This paves the way for a authoritarian gov to do sweeping changes to the medical system far quicker than if nhse was in the way to protect patients

  23. We do need some sort of reform. Hopefully this is well thought out.

  24. Hey guys good news we’re doing away with one massive bureaucracy and replacing it with many smaller bureaucracies that will cost billions more pounds. when it doesn’t work, we will bring in the private sector who will rinse our public coffers even more and then do were worse job than what was originally in place.

    British government were totally incompetent.

  25. This is what Musk’s DOGE pretended to be.

    A legitimate reform and restructuring of public services to make them for efficient. He has announced these plans and immediately people understand the why already.

    Musk put random departments in sight and is not focused on reducing inefficiency but instead gutting department pockets.

  26. A decision desperately needed. Far too many pen pushers and non jobs in the NHS, the waste is exteme. Before anyone attacks me, I am a front line NHS worker.

    I am no way a labour voter in any word of the sense. But I must say, I very much respect this decision by the government.

  27. Would love to know what u/bacon_flavoured_rain thinks about this after his amazing past regarding the NHS

  28. This is good news. Please do not react to the headline. It’s misleading. They should also do this to Water Utilities but that’s a different argument for a different day. Have a good day.

  29. An easy example to understand the difference between NHS and NHS England is Monty Python’s Meaning of Life – specifically the miracle of birth sketch. The doctors played by Cleese and Chapman are NHS, the administrator who loves the machine that goes PIIIING is NHS England

  30. Thanks to all the comments pointing out NHS England is not the NHS and the NHS will in fact continue to exist and provide healthcare to people. Brief shock there, LOL!

    But yeah, people within the NHS tell me all the time that money isn’t a magic fix. A lot of issues are organisational. We’ll have to see what these changes could end up doing in the long run for the structural and management side of things.

    For one switching from a GP in England to one in Wales or Scotland (or the other way around) is an absolute nightmare. Records get lost regularly, meaning some people may just lose their diagnosis.

  31. The amount of meetings with high paid execs that this will take to make happen will completely undo any potential savings.

  32. Holy shit yes, NHS England just m admin literal woke pushing nonsenses.

    Good, not a Labour voter but damn good move.

  33. Jeremy Hunt seems to be all in favour of it and is praising Kier to the heavens, which does not fill me with confidence.

  34. I’m a little worried about how this will affect right to choose. Currently this is part of NHS England. 

    It’s the only practical way to pursue an ADHD/Autism diagnosis in most of England.

  35. Why is it always Labour that cuts NHS when they campaign on it at election time. Could be they full of BS

    Ot so delicious and satisfying to see Labour consistently betray its voters. Yet then a part of me feels sad that they were duped into voting for this lot.

  36. I’ve just checked the daily mail on this article so you don’t have to.

    [This is the top comment](https://i.ibb.co/j9xy0S8D/174187215915179978.jpg.jpg)

    This is followed closely by moaning about DEI, a term they presumably hadn’t even heard of 6 months ago. Sprinkle in a few screams about woke and you’ve got the full house

  37. Man can you *imagine* the scenes if a Conservative PM did this???

    The Guardian and Independent and Channel 4 and reddit would all be having a field day

    Only a Labour PM can successfully do this. Anyone else does it and “it’s a signal of intent” “It’s a slippery slope, first NHS England, then the rest will fall”

  38. Good, because they are failing miserably and putting the NHS under even more stress. I can imagine how many horribly overpaid management types are employed there who just sit around drinking coffee and having a chat all day, maybe get around to doing some work if they feel like it. It’s bad enough in the trusts, oh no, we haven’t got enough staff on the floor. I know let’s create another position for management to delegate even more work we haven’t got the staff for.

  39. What about when a government that doesn’t believe in the the NHS inevitably comes into power? The next Tories? Or Reform? Seems like a bad idea to give the government more control over the day-to-day running of the NHS…

  40. I can’t wait to hear from reformites why they hate this despite foaming at the mouth when Fromage calls to privatize and defund the main NHS.

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