NHS Commissioning Board (Mandate)

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Let me remind the hon. Gentleman, as I reminded the right hon. Member for Leigh, that for the four years that preceded this Government, there were underspends, including when the right hon. Gentleman was Health Secretary, and in three of those four years the underspend was higher than it was in our first year in office. But we do want innovative cancer treatments to be available. That is why we introduced, among other things, the cancer drugs fund, which was not introduced by his Government and which has transformed the lives of thousands of cancer sufferers.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I welcome the statement, particularly the use of IT and online resources, but how will we avoid the previous errors of Connecting for Health and its huge costs?

[Mr Hunt]

That is a very important question. We are going to avoid that because I will not be signing any big national IT contracts. The initiative will be locally led and locally driven. Guidelines will be laid down to make sure that all the systems developed in different parts of the country are inter-operable. That is very important, but we will not have any grand plans nor will there be a big single database, so we can thereby avoid some of the problems. We must none the less be prepared to grasp what technology changes can mean for the NHS, just as they do for the rest of society.