Yvette Cooper unveils new NHS quango as part of abolishing “world’s largest quango”

AI Summary

UK Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced a new NHS body to take over regional delivery functions as the government proceeds with abolishing NHS England. The reorganization follows concerns about integrating staff into the civil service, redundancy costs, and planning for the transition.

A new NHS body separate from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is being set up to take on NHS England’s regional work, the health secretary has confirmed.1The government announced last year that it would abolish “the world’s largest quango”—NHS England. At the time the former prime minister Keir Starmer said that he could not justify spending taxpayers’ money “on two layers of bureaucracy.”234Following through on this announcement has been far from easy, however, with reports of problems in integrating NHS England staff into the civil service because of pay discrepancies,5 as well as huge redundancy costs.6 Experts have questioned the government’s lack of forethought and planning before announcing that it would abolish NHS England.Now the health secretary, Yvette Cooper—who inherited the job of seeing the abolition through from Wes Streeting7—has announced that while the “vast majority of [NHS England’s] current national delivery functions will transfer” into a...