In focus: Profession backs NHS England’s abolition

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting’s statement to the House of Commons last week on plans to abolish NHS England has been largely welcomed by the optical profession.

Streeting cited Lord Darzi’s investigation into the ‘disastrous’ 2012 reorganisation of the NHS, the £22bn black hole in public finances and ‘two large organisations doing the same roles with an enormous amount of duplication’.

Reforms to bring NHS England into the Department of Health and Social care over the next two years would ‘save hundreds of millions of pounds a year’, ‘cut waiting times’ and ‘slash through layers of red tape, ending the infantilisation of frontline NHS leaders’.