Wes Streeting has accused the NHS of being “addicted to overspending” in a harsh criticism of the public service.
The health secretary said the NHS needs to stop assuming “someone will come along to bail them out”.
Wes Streeting issued the warning following Keir Starmer’s announcement on Thursday that NHS England will be abolished. The organisation will be absorbed into the Department of Health and Social Care in a bid to salvage taxpayers’ cash.
Streeting also admitted that more cuts to bureaucracy were still to come, suggesting hundreds more quangos could be at risk of job cuts in a major overhaul. “I can’t sugar coat the fact there will be a significant number of job losses,” he told broadcasters.
The health secretary told Sky News that integrated care boards (ICBs), which oversee NHS trusts at the regional level, are being instructed to reduce costs by 50 per cent, with an emphasis on cutting management expenses.
He said: “Myself and Jim [Mackey, NHS England’s chief executive] are confronting a financial planning round for the year ahead where systems returned financial plans to us that would have involved an overspend between £5 and £6 billion before the new financial year has even begun.
“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 up routine deficits, with the assumption that someone will come along to bail them out, in a way that, by the way, local councils would never be able to do.”
Defending job cuts, he said: “I’m going after the bureaucracy, not the people who work in it. Of course, I can’t sugar coat the fact that there will be a significant number of job losses and we will want to make sure we are treating people fairly, supporting them properly through that process. And I’m not criticising them, but I’ve got to make sure the system is well set up.”
He added: “I’m responsible for an NHS that can’t see an ambulance arrive on time. I’m responsible for an NHS where people can’t always get a GP appointment when they need one, where NHS dentistry is barely existent in parts of the country. So there are fundamental problems I need to fix.”
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