Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of redundancies arising from the abolition of NHS England.

Ministers and senior Department officials will work with the new executive team at the top of NHS England, led by Sir Jim Mackey, to lead the formation of a new joint centre.

The abolition of NHS England will strip out the unnecessary bureaucracy and cut the duplication that comes from having two organisations doing the same job. We will empower staff to focus on delivering better care for patients, driving productivity up, and getting waiting times down. As part of these changes, we intend to reduce the headcount across the Department and NHS England, with further details to become available as we take the programme forward.

These changes are no reflection of the tireless work carried out by talented professionals across the health sector. These changes are about forming a more agile and efficient system, in the interests of patients and the public.