THOUSANDS of NHS staff redundancies in England are now to be forced through after a deal was reached with the Treasury to allow the health service to ‘overspend this year’ to cover the cost of paying-off thousands of NHS staff.
The Labour government said earlier this year that 18,000 admin and managerial jobs would go with NHS England, the body that runs the NHS, being brought into the Department of Health and Social Care alongside the savage cuts to local health boards.
NHS bosses and health ministers had been in talks with the Treasury over how to pay for the £1bn one-off bill with the health service wanting extra money.
The Treasury blocked that, but a compromise has been reached with the NHS permitted to overspend for just this year.
As the job cuts result in savings in future years, the NHS will be expected to recoup the costs further down the line at the expense of a much smaller workforce.
Overall, government sources said no extra money is going into the NHS beyond what was agreed at the spending review this year – an extra £29bn a year above inflation by 2028-29.
Labour’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting told BBC Breakfast that patients and NHS staff had told him the health service had ‘too many layers of management, too many layers of bureaucracy’.
Streeting said that: ‘People want to see the front line prioritised, and that is exactly what we’re doing,’ and to hell with the rest! He added he told NHS leaders that these mass redundancies meant ‘we’re finally on the road to recovery’.
Speaking to health managers at the NHS Providers’ conference in Manchester, Streeting said: ‘I want to reassure taxpayers that every penny they are being asked to pay will be spent wisely.
‘We’re now pushing down on the accelerator and slashing unnecessary bureaucracy, to reinvest the savings in front-line care.
‘It won’t happen overnight, but with our investment and modernisation, we will rebuild our NHS so it is there for you when you need it once again.’ The ‘once again’ refers to the distant future!
According to the government, the reforms will raise £1bn a year by the end of the parliament to improve services for patients.
It said every £1bn saved in bureaucracy costs is enough to fund an extra 116,000 hip and knee operations.
NHS England is to be dumped, with the bureaucracy assured that ‘NHS England is expected to be brought back into the Department of Health within two years, while the cuts to integrated care boards (ICBs), which plan health services for individual regions, will reduce their headcounts by 50%.’
NHS Providers’ chief executive Daniel Elkeles said: ‘This is a pragmatic step that means planned redundancies can now go ahead.
‘It reflects the flexibility of a three-year settlement, allowing some funding to be brought forward in order to generate future savings to go into front-line care.
‘However, we must recognise the position of staff affected by these changes – people who have offered commitment and service to the NHS – who face a very uncertain future.’
Patricia Marquis of the Royal College of Nursing has however warned that the redundancies could backfire. She said: ‘Front-line services need more investment, but to do this off the backs of making thousands of experts redundant is a false economy.
‘Expert registered nurses working across NHS England and ICBs don’t just run vital public health programmes and oversee care programmes for the vulnerable – they connect the NHS and social care services with one another.
‘To imply these are administrators shows a complete lack of understanding of their roles and how they contribute to patient care.’
The Labour government is poised to butcher the NHS that has saved thousands of lives and given ordinary people a much better life.
This must not be allowed to happen. The TUC must be forced to call a general strike to defend the NHS by kicking out this Labour government and bringing in a Workers Government and Socialism.
Organise the general strike now!
Forward to the British Socialist Revolution!
