Department of Health and Social Care

Debate between Ashley Dalton and Layla Moran

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ben Coleman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Layla Moran]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ashley Dalton]

I will give way very briefly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Layla Moran]

The Minister will have noted, on page 53 of the estimates, a £1 billion decrease in capital spending in the departmental accounts. Will that be explained, and can the Minister explain now how new hospitals constitute day-to-day spending?

[Ashley Dalton]

I will be coming to that, but I thank the hon. Lady for raising it.

We have talked about productivity, an issue that has been raised by many Members including the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. I am delighted that Members on both sides of the House, including Conservative Members, have now recognised and accepted the value of the Darzi report, which this Government commissioned.

We are committed to meeting a 2% productivity target by 2025-26. To help us to achieve that, there is a £2 billion investment in NHS technology, allocated to freeing up staff time, ensuring that trusts adopt electronic patient records—we have heard a great deal about old-fashioned paper today—and enhancing cyber-security measures, while also improving patient access to services via the NHS. The current measures of health productivity data do not capture all the outputs and outcomes adequately, and NHS England is working with the Office for National Statistics and the University of York to refine those metrics. Reform is at the heart of our 10-year plan.

We are rebuilding our capital-starved NHS through £1.6 billion of national capital funding in 2025-26, which will help us to achieve constitutional standards. The money will help to deliver more than 30,000 additional procedures and more than 1.25 million diagnostic tests as they come online through investment in new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners, new beds across the estate, and a £70 million investment in new radiotherapy machines to improve cancer treatment. Questions have been asked about the shift from capital to revenue. Some of investment has met historic need, including capital funding for technology and new hospitals programmes, but because of the nature of the funding it needed to be defined as revenue. It is still being spent on those programmes. The autumn Budget included a commitment to ban shifting from capital to revenue, and I can confirm that no shifts of that nature have taken place since then. I will now give way.