Exclusive
Wes Streeting refuses to be drawn on whether doctors and nurses could lose jobs as Labour axes NHS England
13 March 2025, 16:03 | Updated: 13 March 2025, 16:54
STREETING-MAIN-LINE
The Health Secretary has refused to confirm if doctors and nurses will lose their jobs in the wake of NHS England being abolished by the government.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Sir Keir Starmer today 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."
But speaking to LBC’s Andrew Marr, Health Secretary Wes Streeting was unable to confirm doctors and nurses would not lose their jobs with this shift in policy.
Mr Streeting was asked five times if doctors and nurses may face the axe before confirming changes in roles would be “inevitable” but new jobs will open “elsewhere” for the frontline staff that may lose their positions.
“We should not be losing frontline staff and services because we have got a bloated bureaucracy and layers and layers of bureaucracy,” he said.
“I can't say there'll be no changes to services. But for example, we've put now almost 1000 more GPs onto the front line since we came in.
“I think the jobs will inevitably change. I think the other thing to say, though, in terms of future projections, we got an NHS where 1 in 9 people in the country are projected to be working for it. If we carried on at the rate of growth in staff numbers for the next 50 years, 100% of the country will be working for the NHS. That's clearly not sustainable. So we are reforming the NHS.”
Mr Streeting said any job losses for doctors and nurses would be a “last resort.”
He said: “The reason why I was being careful about my words is because inevitably there'll be some service changes where a doctor or nurse might be employed in one place and that may change, but they should find jobs elsewhere.”
Explaining the decision to axe NHS England, he added: “NHS England is twice as large as it was in 2010, when Labour was delivering the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history.
“So we are paying more, getting less. So what the Prime Minister and I are announcing today is about better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers.”
Describing NHS England as an "arms-length body", the PM 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 added.
Answering a question from a cancer patient on how the decision would improve NHS services, Sir Keir Starmer said: "Amongst the reasons we are abolishing it is because of the duplication.
"So, if you can believe it, we've got a communications team in NHS England, we've got a communications team in the health department of government; we've got a strategy team in NHS England, a strategy team in the government department. We are duplicating things that could be done once.
"If we strip that out, which is what we are doing today, that then allows us to free up that money to put it where it needs to be, which is the front line."
He added that the Government wanted to push power to frontline workers "and away from the bureaucracy which often holds them up".
It is unclear how many people will lose their jobs following this move but Health Secretary Wes Streeting said up to 10,000 roles are at risk.
Asked if the UK government can learn lessons from the Trump administration’s reform of governmental departments, Mr Streeting said: "I think we've all been struck by the pace at which President Trump's new administration has come in and made a whole bunch of changes to the way that Washington and the way that government works.
"Now look, that is from a right-wing populist perspective. As a centre left politician, a centre left government, we might look at some of those changes and think, 'Well, they're not quite the changes we would make from a centre left perspective, but the speed at which they've operated, we've actually thought, we can go further and faster.
"We will. We are. That's what the Prime Minister's doing. And I think what people are seeing from Keir Starmer is both abroad and the way he's handling diplomacy and at home, and the way he's driving reform, I think he is kind of restoring what I think are those kinds of traditional values of British quiet and effective diplomacy, but also far more efficient and effective public service."
