Is this the beginning of a department of government efficiency (DOGE) in British sauce? Nine months after taking office, the government’s government Keir Starmer announced Thursday, March 13, wanting to reshape the management and management of the government health agency, known as NHS (National Health Service). A reorganization intended to “reduce bureaucracy” in the public health health system.
The abolition of the NHS England organization, which manages the services of the health system in England and works with the government to agree on funding and priorities, will, according to the Prime Minister, reduce administrative formalities and save “hundreds of millions of pounds per year”.
The NHS England will be removed and placed under “democratic control” in order to reduce “bureaucracy too expensive,” said Keir Starmer. The parapublance organization had been made autonomous in 2012 by the conservatives, with the aim of freed the health control system for political control, recalls The Telegraph. They actually created the largest and most stifling bureaucracy that the health system has ever known, now at the head of a budget of almost 200 billion pounds sterling (237 billion euros), the British newspaper continues.
According to the announcements, the organization will therefore return under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Health within two years. According to the Prime Minister, this decision should release funds for front -line services and thus reduce waiting times in the emergency room – one of Labor’s key commitments.
Reshape “an overly cautious and soft condition”
The government said it expected 50 % of NHS jobs, which had 14,400 employees in December, and the Ministry of Health, which counts 3,500, be deleted. In a speech delivered to Hull, in the center-east of the country, Keir Starmer said that politicians had for too long “chosen to hide behind large networks of parapublic organizations”, organizations funded by taxpayers but not directly controlled by the government, reports the Bbc.
This promised transformation of the NHS is actually part of a larger plan aimed at reshaping what the Prime Minister called “an overly cautious and soft state”, but also to make the British public service “more agile”. It has half a million public officials, a figure well below its French neighbor who employs some 5.7 million civil servants.
Faced with the fear of a massive deletion of posts, the Minister of Technology, Peter Kyle, assured on Thursday on LBC radio that this project would not resemble that of the American Commission for Government Effectiveness (DOGE), led by Elon Musk. The billionaire, close to American president Donald Trump, launched, in a few weeks, the dismantling of several government agencies. “It is a program that will have a positive impact […] We don’t want to scare people, “said Peter Kyle. In an article published Thursday in the Telegraphthe Prime Minister assured that a reduction in staff and an increased appeal to artificial intelligence could allow the government to save 45 billion pounds per year.