In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Starmer made a surprise announcement that N.H.S. England was to be scrapped.

That definitely does not mean the abolition of Britain’s National Health Service, which offers free health care to all, is funded through taxation and payroll deductions, and is so popular that it was once likened by a senior government minister to a national religion.

In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Starmer made a surprise announcement that N.H.S. England, an agency within the broader health service, would be eliminated.Credit…Pool photo by Oli Scarff

What will go instead is one administrative level within the larger health system.

N.H.S. England was created in 2013. The agency works with the government to agree on funding and priorities for the health service, but it is separate from the health ministry, called the Department of Health and Social Care.

The agency employs around 15,300 people. How many of those jobs will be eliminated and how many will transfer to the Department of Health, which employs 3,300, is unclear. But the health secretary, Wes Streeting, said in Parliament on Thursday that “hundreds of millions of pounds a year” would be saved and that he aimed to reduce the overall head count by 50 percent.

The government argues that having two separate structures, which date from an ill-fated reform of the health service in 2012-3, is wasteful and means that some tasks are duplicated.

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