Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has insisted the NHS was "on track" to balance its books by April but she could not state how many redundancies there would be in the organisation.
She said talk of 18,000 job losses this year remained a "statistical projection" but there would be "some reduction" in jobs and redundancies would be made among NHS managers and administrators.
The 18,000 figure would not all be made redundancies as much of it would come from staff retiring or moving to other areas of the health service. Some of these positions would then not be replaced.
Ms Hewitt told Sky News she was "confident" the NHS would balance its books and that she took responsibility for the organisation.
She said: "I have made it clear that we do need to get the NHS back into financial balance by the end of March. We are on track to do that and I am confident we will."
She added: "I do take responsibility, I have always believed in leading from the front."
On job losses she said: "There will be some reduction in jobs - we will know when we do the final survey. 18,000 is the current statistical projection but that is all it is. The important thing is that over the last 10 years the NHS has taken on over 300,000 more staff."
She said there had been 903 redundancies up to the end of September last year but "almost all of them" had been administrative and managerial.
She added: "There will be more redundancies and more job losses amongst managers and administrators because we said in our manifesto in 2005 that we would reduce the management overheads."
Later when pressed further about the 18,000 figure she added: "Those are not people losing their jobs. You have got to remember that every year about 10% of NHS staff either retire or move jobs. What is happening is that as some people retire or move jobs those jobs aren't being filled because as the NHS becomes more efficient...you can actually treat more people and treat them faster with fewer staff and fewer beds than you needed in the old days."
Read More
MORE ABOUT