Sir Keir Starmer has announced plans to abolish NHS England in a bid to cut government red tape and bureaucracy and bring the health service back under "democratic control."
The move will put the NHS "back at the heart of government where it belongs," Sir Keir said, "freeing it to focus on patients, less bureaucracy, with more money for nurses."
Describing NHS England as an "arms-length body", he said the move will allow the health service to "refocus" on cutting waiting times at "your hospital".
Abolishing NHS England will reduce "duplication", saving money that can then be spent on frontline services, the Prime Minister said.
As the public awaits developments, David Rowland, Director of the Center of Health and Public Interest joins Vanessa Feltz to discuss.
Listen to the full show on Global Player: https://app.af.globalplayer.com/Br0x/LBCYouTubeListenLive
#vanessafeltz #uk #politics #ukpolitics #news #nhs #labour #keirstarmer #healthcare #publichealth #nhsengland #waste #LBC
LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK.
Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/
Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
The move will put the NHS "back at the heart of government where it belongs," Sir Keir said, "freeing it to focus on patients, less bureaucracy, with more money for nurses."
Describing NHS England as an "arms-length body", he said the move will allow the health service to "refocus" on cutting waiting times at "your hospital".
Abolishing NHS England will reduce "duplication", saving money that can then be spent on frontline services, the Prime Minister said.
As the public awaits developments, David Rowland, Director of the Center of Health and Public Interest joins Vanessa Feltz to discuss.
Listen to the full show on Global Player: https://app.af.globalplayer.com/Br0x/LBCYouTubeListenLive
#vanessafeltz #uk #politics #ukpolitics #news #nhs #labour #keirstarmer #healthcare #publichealth #nhsengland #waste #LBC
LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK.
Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/
Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Let's talk first to David Rowland, Director of the Centre for Health and Public Interest.
00:05Hello David, thanks very much indeed for joining me.
00:07We're streeting Waging War on Waste, this is just the beginning, he's taking an axe
00:11to it.
00:12Do you think there are many areas of waste that are obvious that need to be weeded out,
00:16eliminated?
00:17Well, I think there's always room for improvement within any kind of system, let's be absolutely
00:23honest about that.
00:24And I've worked for a number of years within some of these quangos, I don't work in them
00:28now, so I can, you know, testify to the fact that there's obviously room for improvement.
00:32But I think what's kind of quite interesting about the way that West Street is approaching
00:37this, it's very, very similar to the guy that he's criticised, Andrew Lansley, who in 2010
00:44came in and pretty much said the same thing, we're going to cut back on all these quangos,
00:47we're going to have a bonfire of red tape, we're going to get rid of all of these managers.
00:53What happened?
00:54The example of the quango that I work for, and that was the regulator of social workers,
01:01and the government announced it was going to close down.
01:03And it took two years for that process to go through lots of consultation with staff,
01:08lots of consultation with ministers, the total bill for closing it down.
01:13And this isn't just redundancies, this is other stuff as well was about 17 to 19 million
01:19quid.
01:20Gosh.
01:21And five years later, another minister comes in, decides they're going to have another
01:25look at the system, and decided that what they needed to do was to create a specific
01:30regulator for social workers.
01:33It costs 10 million quid to recreate.
01:35Well, there's 27 million quid of waste right there in one, just the two sentences you've
01:40just started, isn't there?
01:41I know.
01:42And I think this is one of the things that is never really thought about when you go
01:46through these mass reorganizations, making potentially 30,000 people redundant.
01:51I don't know if you've ever been through a redundancy process in your own life, but that
01:55usually is probably about 10 hours of interviews that happens with staff, consulting them,
02:01making sure they're okay, paying them out at the end of it.
02:04If you think of all of that time that could be spent on trying to deliver the better healthcare
02:11system that we need, then you start really having to question what actually is the value
02:18added of this particular proposal that's coming forward.
02:21All right.
02:22So for many people listening, David, they will simply think waste is bad.
02:26We definitely do not spend our lives paying national insurance for it to be wasted.
02:30That we don't want.
02:31Anything bloated, we don't want.
02:34Superfluous managers who cost a lot of money, we definitely do not want.
02:38Things that are reduplicated unnecessarily, we don't want.
02:42And we certainly don't want flabby contracts with companies that go on for years and years
02:46because it's no one's personal money.
02:48Nobody ever checks whether actually you could get it much better, cheaper, more efficiently
02:52somewhere else.
02:53We don't want that.
02:54And we certainly don't want beds blocked by people who don't want to be there.
02:57They want to go home and they can't go home because social care isn't there.
03:01So there are many, many things we don't want.
03:03And when Wes Streeting says, I'm going to wage war on waste, it kind of sounds like
03:07he doesn't want exactly what we don't want.
03:09He wants what we want.
03:10But you're concerned that his plan will just end up ultimately costing us more than it
03:15saves us, are you?
03:17I think there's a very strong chance that.
03:19So just to look back at what Andrew Lunsley did last time.
03:23And the previous person that you interviewed from the NHS Confederation pointed out very
03:27well.
03:28Andrew Lunsley came in and said, look, we've got to move the NHS out of political control.
03:33And so they created NHS England.
03:35It should be remembered, though, that back in 1991, the Conservative government created
03:42a thing called the NHS Executive, the same intention of moving management out of central
03:49control and moving them all up to a massive office in Leeds.
03:54Labour comes in in 2002, decides what they're going to do is to reverse that.
03:58Andrew Lunsley comes in in 2012 and reverses that again.
04:03And now we're streeting is going back round the same cycle.
04:06This sounds expensive.
04:09It sounds like the hokey-cokey, but it sounds like an expensive version.
04:13It's a very expensive, it's a very expensive way of changing the system.
04:16And I just say this in terms of waste, in terms of the contracts that are available
04:21for areas where the government could genuinely look.
04:25So we looked at the PFI contracts across the NHS, £160 million a year, on average, is
04:32leaking out in those contracts in the form of profit.
04:35Now, if I was sitting in West Street and Shoes, I probably would be targeting that.
04:40And just to explain what a PFI means, what's PFI?
04:42Yeah, I'm sorry.
04:43Yeah, of course.
04:44So basically, PFI was introduced by the last Labour government.
04:49And it is a scheme where basically, the NHS contracts with a private company to build
04:57NHS hospitals.
04:59And as a result of that, the NHS is effectively leasing these hospitals back from the companies.
05:04Now we get it.
05:05Now we get it.
05:06And you think those are hemorrhaging money?
05:09Hemorrhaging.
05:10Hemorrhaging.
05:11David, thank you very much for setting this all out so clearly for us, greatly appreciate
05:14it.