The Health Bill was the flagship NHS legislation announced yesterday in The King's Speech.
Measures also include support for ICB strategic commissioning, a single patient record and HSSIB and Healthwatch England abolition.
Director of policy and research, Dr Hugh Alderwick at The Health Foundation, said the Bill handed too much power to ministers over the day-to-day running of the NHS and risked weakening the voice of patients.
Dr Alderwick said the decision to remove mandatory local authority representatives from NHS ICBs could weaken the links between the NHS, social care and public health at a more local level.
‘A cross-Government strategy for rebuilding the UK's health and reducing inequalities is desperately needed,' Dr Alderwick said. ‘The Bill should be used as an opportunity to address this.'
Nuffield Trust chief executive Thea Stein said reorganisation meant the ‘English NHS is tied up reorganising itself precisely when it needs to be improving patient care', adding MPs would need to carefully scrutinise whether cutting the merged workforce by 50% was necessary.
Stein also questioned the degree of new powers handed to the secretary of state, including directing health boards at any time, and hiring and firing NHS trust leaders, commenting: ‘The current political instability reminds us that health secretaries come and go, and a future Government, of any political party, would have a powerful arsenal to intervene and micro-manage the service.'
Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of The King's Fund, said: ‘The Bill centralises more power in Whitehall and the hands of the Secretary of State, and may weaken independent patient voice by abolishing Healthwatch, at the very time ministers say they want to devolve more to local organisations and empower patients.'
Woolnough said the single patient record was likely to be the most controversial element of the Bill adding it was ‘worth making the argument for and one that we hope the Government wins'.
She added: ‘The lack of focus on prevention means opportunities are being missed on obesity, alcohol misuse, the promotion of clean air and generally shifting the balance of health spending away from hospitals.'
