Sir Keir Starmer warned NHS England abolition will 'divert time and energy' away from care

Sir Keir said this would divert more resources to frontline staff as the NHS is brought completely into departmental control.

He claimed the previous Tory government had been mistaken to make NHS England more independent from central government, saying the state was “weaker than ever”.

“Overstretched, unfocused, trying to do too much, doing it badly,” the Prime Minister said in Hull yesterday.

At the same time as these reforms, NHS England, integrated care boards (ICBs) and the Department of Health and Social Care are expected to cut staff numbers by 50 per cent.

All of this is going on as the Government is attempting to cut the near record NHS waiting lists, after pledging that within five years no patient will wait more than 18 weeks for treatment.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has also promised to transform the health service, changing it from analogue and digital and moving much more care into the community.

However, health leaders warned that the “bold” NHS England announcement could distract from focusing on improving patients’ care.

Hugh Alderwick, director of policy at the Health Foundation, said there was some logic in bringing the workings of NHS England and the Government more closely together.

He added: “But history tells us that rejigging NHS organisations is hugely distracting and rarely delivers the benefits politicians expect. Scrapping NHS England completely will cause disruption and divert time and energy of senior leaders at a time when attention should be focused on improving care for patients.

“It will also eat up the time of ministers, with new legislation likely needed.”

Nuffield Trust chief executive, Thea Stein, said that “profound problems facing the NHS remain: how to meet growing patient need in the face of spiralling waiting lists and how to invest in care closer to home with the NHS’s wider finances already underwater and social care reform in the long grass.”

She added: “It is not immediately clear that rearranging the locus of the power at the top will make a huge and immediate difference to these issues, which ultimately will be how patients and the public judge the Government.”

MPs also raised concerns, in response to Mr Streeting’s statement in the House of Commons yesterday.

The Health Secretary said: “These reforms will deliver a much leaner top of the NHS, making significant savings of hundreds of millions of pounds a year. That money will flow down to the front line, to cut waiting times faster, and deliver our plan for change.

“By slashing through the layers of red tape and ending the infantilisation of frontline NHS leaders, we will set local NHS providers free to innovate, develop new, productive ways of working and focus on what matters most, delivering better care for patients.”

Labour MP Kevin McKenna, who worked in the NHS for 26 years, argued the changes could make it harder for the voices of nurses and other clinical leaders to be heard.

The former nurse said: “My heart goes out today to so many people who have insecurity about their jobs following this announcement, even though I believe it to be the right one.

“One of the things I am concerned about is making sure that clinical leadership is still heard at the centre.

“As a nurse, I found it harder to get into NHS England, doctors and their career structures do find it more easy, and moving everything NHS England functions into to the department, moving off of NHS terms and conditions will make it harder for nurses, allied health professionals and other clinicians working in the NHS.”

However, Mr Streeting did get support from one of his predecessors, Jeremy Hunt.

The former Health Secretary and Chancellor said: “Can I commend the boldness of today’s announcement? If the NHS is going to be turned around it is going to need radical reforms.

“If the result today is to replace bureaucratic overcentralisation with political overcentralisation, it will fail.

“But if what happens today is that we move to the decentralised model that we have for the police and for schools, it could be the start of a real transformation.”