Steve Barclay

I rise to speak to clause 1 on the abolition of NHS England and clause 6 on promoting innovation. What characterises the first of those is an announcement without any clear plan. That is what has driven the cost and confusion that a number of Members across the House have spoken about. Those in any doubt about that can just look at NHS England’s own 2025-26 annual accounts, which show that the costs are already more than £100 million higher than forecast and now sit at above half a billion pounds. I do not recall seeing that on election leaflets. Indeed, just six directors at NHS England are being paid over £800,000, and that points to the cost. Sometimes such big figures are hard for constituents to get their heads around. Just to localise it to my own constituency, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB alone paid out £14 million in redundancies last year. It merged with a number of other ICBs to form the Central East ICB, yet we know hear from the Government that it should align with metro mayors, which means going back to exactly what it was before: the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB. That is just one of many confusions around the announcement. The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) spoke about confusion over the timetable and what was described to the media as now an impossible timetable. We also saw reports in the media this weekend about the destination of staff in NHS England. Can they actually go into the Department, or will another body be set up because of the pay disparity between the two? All this is around 18 months on from the actual announcement. The confusion seems to extend to the Government themselves, because they seem unable to answer pretty straightforward written parliamentary questions. Given the time limit, I will give just a few examples. I asked how many people have been hired to NHS England since the announcement of its abolition, not least given the huge cost—over half a billion pounds—of voluntary redundancies. Despite the deadline passing, the Minister has not answered the question. We know from another written parliamentary question that more than 1,000 jobs have been advertised. It is relevant to know, in an organisation that is paying people to leave, how many people it is hiring. I also asked how many people had accepted voluntary redundancy, another written parliamentary question that has passed the deadline without answer. The process is characterised by a lack of transparency.