Health and Social Care: 2022-23 Mandate for NHS England

Thursday 31st March 2022 Written Statements

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

As we are learning to live with covid, we must now return our focus to delivering the Government’s important strategic goals for health and care, including—subject to the agreement of Parliament—by taking forward the further reforms set out in the Health and Care Bill, which is nearing its final stages.

We can define our goals in terms of four key priorities. First, we must prioritise prevention, supporting people to live healthier lives with reduced risk of future health problems. This is crucial if we are to ensure that health and care services can focus resources on those who most need them. It is a central theme of the Government’s command paper “Build Back Better: Our Plan for Health and Social Care” and also supports our action plan on levelling up the United Kingdom.

Secondly, we must create more personalisation—empowering people by putting them in control of their own care. Thirdly we must prioritise performance—driving up the quality of care by working smarter. And in achieving our goals, we must support our people, without whom health and care services could not provide high quality and safe care to all who need it.

I am today laying before Parliament the Government’s 2022-23 mandate for NHS England. This sets out the action that the Government expect the NHS to take in the year ahead in support of these four priorities. There is a firm focus on recovering important NHS-led services that have been impacted by the pandemic. Beyond that, there will be further progress on the NHS long term plan, which will be updated in summer 2022 to ensure it remains aligned to the Government’s post-pandemic priorities. It then paves the way for more resilient and integrated health and care services in future, with excellent leadership, a culture of transparency and openness, and a strong commitment to support and develop the NHS workforce. Key work remains on covid-19. High rates of infection will still need to be managed as we shift from pandemic to endemic.

The revenue and capital resource limits for NHS England in 2022-23 set out in the mandate reflect the updated NHS financial settlement and also take account of the additional support provided through the 2021 spending review to fund the biggest catch-up programme in NHS history.

Also as required by the Act, I am today laying a revised 2021-22 mandate. This revision is to update NHS England’s capital and revenue resource limits for 2021-22 in light of in-year funding decisions.

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