Lansley reforms What were they, and why have they been seen as a disaster?

Keir Starmer announced on Thursday that the government was abolishing NHS England.

- Matthew Weaver

Here we look at how and why the arm's-length body was set up as part of a reorganisation initiated by Andrew Lansley, then the Conservative health minister in the coalition government, to improve decision-making in the health service.

What were the Lansley changes? The changes introduced by Lansley represented the biggest reorganisation in the history of the NHS. One NHS leader quipped at the time that the overhaul was so big it was visible from space. Lansley promised that his Health and Social Care Act 2012 would take the politics out of the day-to-day running of the NHS. The act scrapped regional health authorities and shifted NHS commissioning power to GPs through organisations later known as clinical commissioning groups. It also set up autonomous NHS organisations such as the NHS commissioning board, which later became known as NHS England, to run the service at arm's length from ministerial micromanagement.

In addition, the act transferred responsibility for public health to local government.