NHS England: £1bn redundancy bill is a reasonable estimate, says health secretary

Last month the UK government announced that it planned to abolish NHS England and move many of its functions back into the Department of Health and Social Care.12 An estimated 20 000-30 000 jobs are expected to be lost in the restructuring.

Appearing before MPs on the Health and Social Care Committee on 8 April, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, was asked whether he recognised a figure first reported in the Observer3 that the total cost of redundancy payouts could reach £1bn. He said that it was too early to know the precise numbers but that £1bn was not an “unreasonable ballpark figure.”

Streeting faced a series of other questions from MPs.