Asked by: Baroness Wheeler (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what mechanisms are in place to prevent providers who bid for contracts for NHS-funded services bidding at a loss in order to undercut other providers.
Answered by Earl Howe - Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
The terms of each contract are decided by clinical commissioning groups, and by doing this they outline what they expect from each provider.
The Government is clear that where National Health Service commissioners decide to use competition this must always be as a means to improve the quality of NHS services and achieve best value, as opposed to being driven by price alone.