Wes Streeting said the NHS is “addicted to overspending”, as he confirmed he is seeking cuts within Integrated Care Boards (ICBs).
The health secretary told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that ICBs – which are responsible for planning local health services – have been tasked with finding 50% savings to boost efficiency.
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It’s part of the government’s plans to slash bureaucracy in the health service – which Mr Streeting acknowledged on Sunday would cause anxiety among administrators facing job losses.
He said he was “genuinely sorry” for people worried about the future, but efficiency savings would divert money to the frontline of the NHS.
Confirming that Jim Mackey, head of the soon-to-be abolished NHS England, had written to ICBs asking them to halve their running costs, Mr Streeting said: “Financial plans to us would have involved an overspend between £5bn and £6bn before the new financial year is even begun.
“And I’m afraid this speaks to the culture that I identified before the general election, where the NHS is addicted to overspending, is addicted to running operating deficits with the assumption that someone will come along to bail them out, which local councils would never be able to do.”
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Reports of the cuts have sparked concerns among health leaders.
Matthew Taylor, head of the NHS Confederation, said it will require “major changes” and make the task of delivering “long term transformation of the NHS much harder”.
Mr Streeting denied the cut was effectively a form of austerity, saying the government is going after a culture of “waste and inefficiency” which “isn’t just frustrating patients and taxpayers” but staff working for the NHS too.
“They can see layer upon layer upon layer of bureaucracy and accountability,” he said.
“That’s not the fault of the people working in the system. They are also victims of it.
“And that’s why we’re going hard at achieving those savings in order to redeploy money into frontline services, which benefit patients.”
The government also announced this week it would be scrapping NHS England, the world’s biggest quango, saying there is too much duplication with the work that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) does.
Scrapping NHS England ‘beginning not the end’
Mr Streeting has since indicated he will look to scrap other health-related bodies, writing in The Sunday Telegraph that axing NHS England is “the beginning, not the end”.
Asked what other organisations could be for the chopping board, Mr Streeting said he did not want to “get ahead” of a review by Dr Penny Dash into the operational effectiveness of NHS regulators.
“What I will do is look at how we can reduce the number of regulators, reduce the number of regulations wherever possible… and try to reduce the amount of money we are spending,” he said.
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The cabinet minister defended the language being used to describe the plans, after he described the NHS as being “bloated” by bureaucracy and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called it “flabby”.
Streeting ‘genuinely sorry’ about job losses
Mr Streeting stressed he was “talking about the system, not the people who work in it” – adding that he was “genuinely sorry” about the job losses that will come down the line.
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The government has not yet said how many jobs it expects to axe under the reforms.
Mr Streeting acknowledged lots of people will be anxious about their futures, adding: “I’m genuinely sorry about that, because I don’t want them to be in that position. But I’ve got to make the changes.”
The government’s plans have generally received support from opposition parties, though there have been calls for more details.
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Shadow education secretary Laura Trott said reorganisation reforms introduced by the Tories in 2013 were “well-intentioned but didn’t work” and she agrees “in principle” with what Labour has put forward.
However she said the changes aren’t a “silver bullet” and could result in further costs and disruption so “we’ll need to see a very clear plan from the government for how that won’t affect waiting lists further”.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats said the government must “take the same sense of urgency shown here to social care, and complete their review by the end of the year rather than continuing to kick the can down the road”.
