In his Sunday Telegraph article, 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”.

Scrapping NHS England is "the beginning, not the end", the Health Secretary has said, vowing to continue "slashing bloated bureaucracy".

By contrast, Wes Streeting’s action represents a revival of an older Labour tradition, shadowing the politics of the Health Minister, ‘Nye’ Bevan, who drove the foundation of the NHS in the 1940s. If a “bedpan” fell in his birthplace, Tredegar in South Wales, the sound would “reverberate around Whitehall”.