Draft National Health Service Commissioning Board (Additional Functions) Regulations 2017

Debate between David Mowat and Michael Fabricant

Wednesday 1st February 2017 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Draft National Health Service Commissioning Board (Additional Functions) Regulations 2017.

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. These regulations deal with the transfer of a business unit, the Commercial Medicines Unit, from the Department of Health into the NHS Commissioning Board, usually referred to as NHS England. The details are set out in the explanatory note, in particular paragraph 7, but I will tell the Committee in broad terms what the Commercial Medicines Unit does and why we feel it is time to transfer it from the Department of Health to NHS England.

There are 35 to 40 staff in the unit, principally at Runcorn and Reading, and their role is to procure, conclude and manage a set of framework agreements that are used within NHS England to purchase medicines in the hospital sector. About £8 billion total throughput is involved, of which £2.6 billion relates to framework agreements. There is an estimated saving in excess of £100 million a year from having the framework agreements, which cover drugs, medicines and services.

The process is that typically NHS organisations—either the specialised commissioning function or hospital pharmacists—identify areas where it would be of benefit to have framework agreements: perhaps there is going to be a drugs increase or an increase in volume of a particular item. This group sets up those agreements; they negotiate them with the suppliers, put them into place, and make them available for use in hospitals throughout the country. When the drugs are used they are paid for by the NHS. There is clearly a bit of a divide in that the NHS initiates and then the frameworks in the Department of Health and then the NHS do the back end in terms of specialised commissioning and paying for them.

The Carter review, which looked at efficiency across the hospital sector, identified this as an area that we should consider putting back from the Department of Health into NHS England. The view is that that is a logical thing to do at this stage. The regulation would regularise the way that business is carried out.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

Concern was expressed at Prime Minister’s Question Time a couple of hours ago that various parts of the NHS might be sold off in any future agreement between the United States and the UK. Will my hon. Friend confirm that the transfer of this unit to NHS England does not make it any more vulnerable? Perhaps he might like to comment on the Prime Minister’s view regarding any such sell-off.

[The Chair]

Order. Despite Mr Fabricant’s attempt to try to widen the debate to the privatisation of the NHS and trade deals with America, I would be grateful if the Minister ignored his advances and stuck to the subject that we are debating.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Mowat and Michael Fabricant

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

This is a reserved matter, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that early diagnosis is the single most important thing that we need to do better in order to improve our cancer out-turn rates, and that dialogue continues.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

Is it not rather unfair to compare outcome rates for skin cancer, with which I was diagnosed, with those for other types of cancer, because it is easier to diagnose skin cancer at an early stage, which means that the outcomes are usually very good?

[Michael Fabricant]

Yes, because it is easier to diagnose at an early stage—that is the point I am making. Compared with 2010, are we not seeing more than 26,000 extra outpatients a day?

[David Mowat]

Compared with 2010, we are referring an average of 800,000 more people urgently for cancer treatment. My hon. Friend is also right to say that both skin and lung cancer have more straightforward pathways than ovarian and bowel cancer, but that is not to say that we should not focus on continually improving in relation to the points made by the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart).