MORE THAN 100,000 NHS workers are set to be sacked under plans being laid out by the Starmer Labour government it emerged yesterday.
Former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott condemned the announcement, which she described as ‘a shocking decision’.
The brutal cost-cutting ordered by Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting and NHS England’s new chief executive Sir Jim Mackey is so large that NHS Trust bosses have demanded that the Treasury covers the redundancy costs involved, which they say could top £2bn, because they do not have the money.
Mackay has told the 215 NHS trusts to cut the costs of their ‘corporate functions’ by 50% by the end of the year which will force them to sack up to 11% of their entire workforce, which means up to 150,700 workers, given that they employ 1.37 million people.
Matthew Taylor, the NHS Confederation’s chief executive, said trusts are being told to make ‘staggering’ savings and called on the Treasury to create an NHS ‘national redundancy fund’ to foot the bill.
About half of NHS England’s 15,300-strong personnel are set to lose their jobs when it is merged with the Department of Health and Social Care, which will sack a large number of its own 3,300 staff, while a further 12,500 jobs could go at the NHS’s 42 integrated care boards, which employ 25,000 people between them.
Taylor said: ‘Health leaders understand the troubling financial situation facing the country and the need to improve efficiency where they can, as they have already demonstrated by significantly reducing their planned deficit for the year ahead.
‘However, the scale and pace of what has been asked of them to downsize is staggering and leaves them fearful of being able to find the right balance between improving performance and implementing the reforms needed to put the NHS on a sustainable footing.
‘They have told us that unless the Treasury creates a national redundancy fund to cover these job losses, any savings the government hopes to make risks being eroded at best and completely wiped out at worst.’
Hackney North and Stoke Newington Labour MP Abbott said: ‘This is a shocking decision. We should be clear: It is a decision made by government ministers – civil servants are not taking these decisions. It is a Labour government implementing massive NHS cuts.’
