Wes Streeting admitted the NHS is ‘addicted to overspending’ as he prepares to swing the axe across hundreds more quangos

Speaking to the BBC, the Health Secretary said his experience running the Department of Health and Social Care since last summer had ‘driven’ him to announce the reforms.

Defending his reorganisation of health service structures, Mr Streeting said he was ‘presiding over an NHS at the moment where ambulances don’t arrive on time’

In a newspaper article this weekend, Mr Streeting said the abolishment of NHS England ‘is the beginning, not the end’ of Labour’s reforms.

Asked about his possible targeting of hundreds more health bodies and whose jobs might now also be at risk, the Health Secretary told the BBC: ‘I’m going after the bureaucracy, not the people who work in it.

‘I can’t sugar coat the fact there will be a significant number of job losses.

‘And we will want to make sure we are treating people fairly and supporting them properly through that process.

‘I’m not criticising them, but I’ve got to make sure the system is well set up.

‘Because I’m presiding over an NHS at the moment where ambulances don’t arrive on time, where people can’t get a GP appointment when they need one, where NHS dentistry barely exists in parts of the country.

‘These are big fundamental problems and we’ve got to make sure every penny is put in the right place.’

But Mr Streeting refused to say which other health quangos might be scrapped.

‘We will shortly be publishing the findings of Dr Penny Dash, who did a big review of the way in which we regulate in the NHS,’ he added.

‘There is an overregulation. Frontline NHS leaders are complaining to me that they could deliver better care for patients and they could deliver better value for taxpayers.

‘But they are often receiving a barrage of commands – sometimes contradictory and competing demands – from the Department for Health, from NHS England and from the wide range of regulators in this space.

‘If we can simplify this, it’s a complicated system, it’s a complex system.

‘But if we can simplify as much as we can, and do away with this idea that everything in a system this vast, this big, can be commanded and controlled with levers being pulled in Westminster and Whitehall, we will set up the NHS to succeed.’

Speaking earlier to Sky News, Mr Streeting confirmed integrated care boards were being required to make 50 per cent cuts ‘with a particular focus on management costs’.

He said he and health bosses were ‘confronting a financial planning round for the year ahead where systems returned financial plans to us that would have involved an overspend between £5 and £6 billion before the new financial year has even begun’.

‘I’m afraid this speaks to the culture that I identified before the general election where the NHS is addicted to overspending, is addicted to running up routine deficits,’ he added.

The Health Secretary said there was an ‘assumption’ in the NHS that ‘someone will come along to bail them out, in a way that, by the way, local councils would never be able to do’.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Streeting had suggested hundreds more quangos could be in the firing line following he demise of NHS England.

‘The abolition of NHS England – the world’s largest quango – is the beginning, not the end,’ he wrote.

‘Patients and staff alike can see the inefficiency and waste in the health service.

‘My team and I are going through budgets line by line, with a relentless focus on slashing bloated bureaucracy.’

In a round of TV interviews, Mr Streeting refused to say which other health bodies could also be scrapped following Labour’s abolishment of NHS England

NHS England has managed the health service since 2012, when it was established to cut down on political interference in the NHS – something Mr Streeting described as an act of ‘backside-covering’ to avoid blame for failures.

But on Thursday, Sir Keir announced this would come to an end as he unexpectedly revealed the Government would abolish NHS England in an effort to avoid ‘duplication’.

Mr Streeting suggested more was to come, saying new NHS England chair Penny Dash had ‘identified hundreds of bodies cluttering the patient safety and regulatory landscape, leaving patients and staff alike lost in a labyrinth of paperwork and frustration’.

The move towards scrapping NHS England and other health-related quangos marks a change in direction for Mr Streeting, who in January of this year said he would not embark upon a reorganisation of the NHS.

He told the Health Service Journal he could spend ‘a hell of a lot of time’ on reorganisation ‘and not make a single difference to the patient interest’, saying instead he would focus on trying to ‘eliminate waste and duplication’.

But in his newspaper article, he said he had heard former Conservative health ministers ‘bemoan’ not abolishing NHS England.

‘If we hadn’t acted this week, the transformational reform the NHS needs wouldn’t have been possible,’ he added.

The Government expects scrapping NHS England will take two years and save ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ that can be spent on frontline services.

But during the week, Downing Street would not be drawn on how many people were facing redundancy as a result of the changes.