The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, would like to cut the amount of paperwork doctors and nurses have to do by a third so that they can spend more time with patients.

Mr Hunt has asked the NHS Confederation to come up with a plan in coming months to reduce the amount of red tape, box-ticking and “burdensome regulation” that nurses have to complete in order for them to spend more time with patients.  Mr Hunt will comment: “We must avoid thinking that care and compassion can be commanded from on high either by regulators or politicians.  Endless boxes to tick, cumbersome bureaucracy and burdensome regulations are the problem – they cannot be the solution.  It is because people believe in the value of the NHS that they spend their working lives in it.  So this about unlocking those values that lie inside the outstanding doctors and nurses who deliver care week-in and week-out and stopping the dead hand of top-down targets crushing the goodness out of them.”