Downing Street 'does not want Andrew Lansley 'taken out and shot' Government officials are reportedly exasperated with the Health Secretary's failure to win more support from critics. The Times quoted one "Downing Street source" as saying: "Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot. He's messed up both the communication and the substance of the policy. An "insider" told the paper that Mr Lansley has proved to be "a disaster" and was "a law unto himself." However, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister insisted she did not "recognise" the views. Asked whether Mr Cameron believed Mr Lansley should be "shot," she said: "No. The Prime Minister backs Andrew Lansley and backs the reforms that we are pushing through Parliament in order to deliver a better health service. The spokeswoman agreed that Mr Lansley had the Prime Minister's "full support." Understandably, lots of people have different views on our reforms, she said. We accept that. The fact is we have to reform the NHS. We believe that putting the NHS into the hands of health professionals rather than a bunch of bureaucrats is the way forward. She said she did not recognise the suggestion that Labour's former health secretary, Alan Milburn, could be given a peerage and asked to return to his old job to replace Mr Lansley and steer reforms through parliament. Two leading lights in the pro-reform NHS Alliance and National Association of Primary Care warned of flaws in the design of the planned changes. Dr Charles Alessi and Dr Michael Dixon told The Guardian they were concerned that new GP-led clinical commissioning groups will find themselves under the control of a National Commissioning Board, in place of the Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities which are being abolished to grant frontline workers more autonomy. They warned that the proposed new structure involves "layers of bureaucracy and management with complex guidelines." The fact that many of the NCB's staff are likely to come from the old PCTs and SHAs "adds to clinical commissioners' concerns and perceptions that they will be suffocated instead of liberated, which in our view is fundamental to the success of clinically-led commissioning," they said. Dr Alessi told The Guardian: "What we are hearing and seeing are the same old messages and the same old structures, albeit with new nomenclatures. If we put the same ingredients into the mix, the likelihood is that we shall deliver the same inefficient environment and outcomes. This is insupportable in an economy of tight financial restraint.