Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

For some more specialist services, collaboration between various parts of the local NHS will always be needed. That is about good health care commissioning and ensuring that services are joined up in a collaborative way. Whereas day-to-day, bread-and-butter services will be commissioned by a local CCG, for more specialist services, clinical commissioners will of course need to work together to ensure that local centres of excellence are commissioned.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

The sustainability of NHS facilities is often prejudiced by the millstone of Labour’s private finance initiative deals. What is the Government’s expectation of how CCGs should make the best of the hand that they have been dealt?

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that PFI deals signed by the previous Government have crippled the finances of many hospital trusts, meaning that many of them are unable to invest as much in front-line patient care as they would like. It is important that the Government support the mitigation of PFI deals, when possible, and we have a group that is doing exactly that and supporting local commissioners to deal with the worst excesses of the previous Government’s mismanagement of the NHS finances.