NHS England has only shed 10.5% of its staff one year after Starmer announced it would be ‘abolished’ to great fanfare. A blow to Wes Streeting’s claim to be able to blast through the barriers of the state…
Information obtained by Guido’s FOI Unit shows that there were 17,377 employees of the quango on 1st March last year and 15,556 were still in place as of this month. Only 4,065 staff have applied for voluntary redundancy…
3,761 staff have had their applications for redundancy approved and 564 more have confirmed they would take one. NHS England says there are “more expected.” You would hope so…
At this rate it will take ten years for the quango to finish shedding staff and wind itself down. Maybe Streeting thinks he would be better equipped to finish the job from Downing Street…
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”