I completely agree and I have also worked for the NHS in a variety of different project roles both under Labour and the coalition. There was an absolute gravy train under Labour and you had people being paid huge amounts of money to sit in shiny offices pushing around paper and speaking in impenetrable jargon who never saw the inside of a hospital or clinic and added zero value to patients. I'm talking obscene amounts of money. Sometimes I was paid up to £40k a year just to sit round and look busy.
I also worked in fantastic frontline services with dedicated staff which were well run and committed to good patient care. But when the cuts came in the shiny office staff had influence and guess who got cut? That's right. The excellent services. And even when the 'shiny office' people are cut they just set up consultancies and sell their services back for even more money.
The problem is that you are never going to get rid of a lot of these layers of pointless management because they're the decision makers. They implement the cuts and they are tight knit groups who scratch each other's backs and are more interested in preserving a cushy existence for their mandarin class than benefitting patients and that's what they keep in mind when organising services. They would rather cut a service which was great for patients than cut one which was a bit pointless but paid lots of managers. And few people who know this will speak out because most people who know are financially benefitting from it.
I feel sorry for frontline staff and the good managers. I worked in some truly excellent services managed by ex nurses, doctors and midwives who were hands on and knew their stuff so could run services practically with patient care at the forefront. Most of those services are gone. But the departments with business graduates who never see a patient from one year to the next are still there.