Abolishing NHS England gets full marks for ambition (The Independent, 13 March 2025)

Summary

It’s an extremely bold decision by Kier Starmer to overhaul Britain’s biggest employer but it’s a task every government has attempted – and so far failed.

In stark contrast to the countless waffly prime ministerial speeches about reducing inefficiency and reducing civil service numbers that we have heard over the decades, Starmer and colleagues have at least started on a more audacious and tangible project. With the recent departure of the NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard and others in the senior team, the work on winding down the biggest quango in the world is already underway.

Wes Streeting, health secretary, made a strong case for these reforms, based on evidence from the Darzi report and the Hewitt review. They will reverse the last “top-down” reorganisation instituted in 2012 by Andrew Lansley, the then health secretary, which was hugely disruptive and distracting for all concerned, and in the end, added complication and reduced accountability without any obvious improvement in patient outcomes during the coalition government’s “age of austerity”.

However, such success is not preordained. There will, inevitably, be disruption, and, given the size and complexity of the health service, it’s not obvious why abolishing NHS England, rather than devolving more functions from Whitehall to the agency, was the more efficient solution, writes The Independent in this Editorial.