UK politics: Unison attacks ‘shambolic’ announcement of NHS England’s abolition – as it happened

Keir Starmer announces the abolition of NHS England on Thursday Photograph: Oli Scarff/PA

6.10pm GMT

Early evening summary

• Keir Starmer has brought the health service back under the control of ministers by abolishing NHS England.

• Unison, which describes itself as the largest healthcare union in the UK, has described the announcement about the abolition of NHS England as “shambolic”. (See 2.09pm.)

• Keir Starmer has said he wants to see central government being smaller, but more effective. In an interview with the News Agents podcast, after a speech in which he said that some parts of the state “see their job as blocking the government from doing the very things that it was elected to do” (see 10.57am), he said:

I think [the state] should be smaller, more agile. It should be active, and this is the political difference.

By and large, Conservatives don’t believe in the state. They think the free market should do the work. That’s why they think the state should be smaller.

I believe in the state. I think it should be active. I think it should be sleeves rolled up. It should be on the pitch, making a difference.

But at the moment, what we’ve got is an oversized and underpowered state, the complete opposite of the active state, that I believe would make a big difference.

• Gus O’Donnell, the former cabinet secretary, has described the way the government has communicated its plans to reform the civil service as “disastrous”. In an interview on Radio 4’s PM programme, O’Donnell, who was cabinet secretary from 2005 to 2011 and who is now a peer, said that he supported what Starmer was trying to do. But he went on:

So the substance, yes. There is definite scope for improving performance.

On the communications, it’s been nothing short of disastrous. You go back to the prime minister saying that civil servants were happy in the ‘tepid bath of managed decline’. And that Guardian briefing early in the week that they wanted to do ‘project chainsaw’. I mean - trying to be a mini Elon Musk, that is completely ridiculous.

And that’s not what the prime minister said. The prime minister was talking about building trust and respect for civil service, he talked about his time in the civil service, talked about the benefits you can get from talking to frontline people.

So they’ve got a serious mismatch between what the prime minister is saying and what they are briefing.

Asked if he was angry about this, O’Donnell said:

This is really damaging the prime minister and what he wants to achieve because, believe it or not, if you talk to civil servants and say they like managing decline and that you’re going to take a chainsaw to them, do you think that’s actually going to result in them forming of their best?

• Peter Kyle, the science and technology secretary, has asked ChatGPT for advice on a range of work-related issues, including why British businesses are not adopting artificial intelligence and what podcasts he should appear on.

• John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, hosted a “warm” meeting with Donald Trump’s son Eric in Edinburgh, days after the US president’s golf course at Turnberry was targeted by protesters.

• Farmers’ incomes have remained stagnant since the 1970s despite improvements in productivity and a fall in the workforce, research has found.

Updated at 6.12pm GMT

5.50pm GMT

The health thinktanks are generally quite sceptical about the decision to abolish NHS England. But Reform, a centrist thinktank (not connected in any way to the Nigel Farage party), has welcomed the news. It posted this on Bluesky.

“I don’t see why decisions about £200bn of taxpayers money... on something as fundamental to our security as the NHS should be taken by an ALB, NHS England”

Excellent to hear the PM commit to abolishing NHS England... as we recommended last year.

And here is the Reform report from last year in which it called for this.