A health minister says the system NHS England staff were working in was "set up to fail", after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced he would abolish the body and bring management of the health services back into "democratic control". Karin Smyth adds, "it's double-running, it's bad for the staff, it's bad for taxpayers and worst of all it's bad for the patients". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00I mean I'm a former NHS manager myself I know these changes are really hard and
00:05they're hard to hear but I've been contacted by several people in the last
00:0824 hours who say it is the right thing to do. I think staff have been working in
00:12situations which are duplicative, they know it's not working, they're good
00:16people but the system they're working in has been set up to fail and that's why
00:21lots of Conservatives said yesterday we wish we'd had the guts to do what you're
00:25doing. It isn't accountable, it's double running, that's bad for the staff, it's
00:29bad for taxpayers and worst of all it's worse for the patient. So redirecting,
00:34making this difficult decision now, redirecting that focus onto those
00:37waiting lists, getting people access to the GP services they want, the things we
00:41promise people, that's what this is about and we need to get on with it and we
00:46need to bring people with us absolutely. Morale is low, that's bad for patients
00:51but I think the optimism about fixing the NHS for the future is really
00:55strongly there and everyone I've spoken to understands the difficult job we've
00:59got to do.