THE NUMBERS of health quangos are to be cut by half over the next three years, the government has announced.

The move follows a review of “arms length bodies”, in which an overlapping and duplication of functions between certain organisations was found, along with unnecessary regulatory activities and a need to rationalise “back office” functions such as human resources and IT.

In addition, the report found potential for some organisations to merge, or to be given independent status with greater “stakeholder” control.

It follows the Gershon review, which advised that £15 billion a year could be saved through greater efficiency and the loss of 80,000 civil service jobs.

In a Commons written answer, health secretary John Reid confirmed that by 2007/08, the number of quangos would be reduced by 50 per cent, saving as much as £0.5 billion in expenditure and reducing the number of posts by a quarter.

“I want to see more staff and re-sources at the frontline delivering better patient care across the country,” he said.

Reid said that the arms-length body sector did “much good work” but it had grown over several decades and no longer met “current health and social care needs or those of future generations”.

“If left unchanged the arms length bodies would employ about 10 times the number of staff at the Department of Health at the end of it’s restructuring programme,” he said. “Changes on this scale would mean that considerable extra resources could be redeployed on the ground. The next stage of the review will involve consulting with individual bodies on proposals for merger,  enationalisation or abolition. This should be completed by the end of June, so that the final outcome can be announced before the summer recess.”