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‘Massive’ bureacracy increase due to health bill, warns RCGP

The Government's NHS reforms are set to treble the number of statutory NHS organisations, the RCGP chair Dr Clare Gerada has warned MPs.

Giving evidence to the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee last week, Dr Gerada warned the reforms will send the number of statutory NHS organisations soaring from 163 to 521.

Dr Gerada complained that NHS bureaucracy was being ‘massively increased', while the revised bill had become ‘very incoherent'.

‘It is neither liberating nor controlling'. It neither allows for GPs to be innovative, nor does it give them tight restraints.'

The RCGP's tally of new quangos includes 300 commissioning groups, 150 health and wellbeing boards, 50 PCT clusters, 15 clinical senates, four SHA clusters, the National Commissioning Board and the Department of Health.

Dr Gerada told Pulse: ‘We are deeply concerned that commissioning consortia are going to be so bound up in bureaucracy that they will simply not be able to deliver the system leadership required.'

The figures were later cited in the House of Commons by Labour leader Ed Miliband during Prime Minister's questions, who challenged Prime Minister David Cameron's claim that the Government would to save £12.3 billion over ten years by reducing bureaucracy in the NHS.

Labour party figures suggest £852 million will ultimately be spent on NHS staff redundancies, prompting Mr Miliband to ask: ‘Will the Prime Minister guarantee to the House that none of those staff will be re-hired to do their old jobs at his new quangos?'