MORE than 1,500 NHS staff in Hampshire will lose their jobs in sweeping changes to the health service, it has been revealed.

All primary care trusts (PCTs) will be abolished when £70 billion of work “commissioning’’ care is transferred to groups of family doctors, from 2013. Town halls will be responsible for public health work.

Yesterday, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley refused to give any guarantee that PCT staff – who include clinicians, managers and administrators – would find similar jobs in the new set-up.

Much of the commissioning work is instead expected to be contracted out by GPs to private health firms, such as Bupa, Capita and a clutch of US-owned giants.

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Meanwhile, the Department of Health is expected to try to water down redundancy terms for NHS staff, a process already underway for local council workers losing their jobs.

Asked if attempts would be made to cut an otherwise enormous redundancy bill, Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, replied: “We will wait for the negotiations to take place”.

Daily Echo: 1,500 NHS staff to lose jobs in health shake-up

There are 1,897 NHS managers and administrators employed across the region, by PCTs and the South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA) – which covers Hampshire and the Isle of Wight as well as Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire and is also disappearing.

However, that total excludes clinical staff – such as community nurses, health visitors, physiotherapists and speech therapists – who are thought more likely to be re-employed.In the Commons, Mr Lansley insisted the changes involved “shifting power decisively towards patients and clinicians” by getting rid of Labour’s “top-down management hierarchy”.

He told MPs: “We will re-balance the NHS, reducing management costs by 45 per cent over the next four years, abolishing quangos that do not need to exist.”

But Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham attacked a “gamble with the great success story that is our NHS”, adding: “The handing of the public budget to independent contractors is tantamount to privatisation.”

Under the plans, around 500 consortia of GPs are expected to be set up across England, which will be responsible for commissioning patient care from hospitals and community services.