What does Wes Streeting think the government will achieve by abolishing NHS England? The Health Secretary gave a statement to MPs this afternoon in which he confirmed that the health service will no longer be operationally independent from the government.
As Streeting made clear to the Commons, the NHS was given operational independence by the Conservatives, who regretted doing so for years. The Tories reversed many of the Andrew Lansley reforms in their Health and Care Act 2022, but the NHS remained independent, even though ministers were the ones answering for its performance and mistakes.
The Health Secretary today claimed that he ‘cannot count the number of Conservatives who have told me in private that they regret the 2012 reorganisation and wish they had reversed it when in office’, but had failed to do so because ‘they put it in the too difficult box while patients and taxpayers paid the price, because only Labour can reform the NHS.
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