Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with (a) NHS England and (b) NHS Improvement on how the capped expenditure process affects NHS services in the London Borough of Enfield.

The National Health Service and wider health system has examined how to sustain and improve care – which produced the NHS Five Year Forward View. The Government committed to providing an additional £10 billion in real terms by 2020-21 to back the NHS’ plan, enabling it to deliver key priorities like seven day care, improved access to cancer treatments and better mental health services.

All public services, local NHS areas need to live within the budget agreed – otherwise they effectively take up resources that could be spent on general practitioners, mental health care, and cancer treatment. As part of their financial planning, NHS England and NHS Improvement have been running a process to look at how a small number of areas could do more to balance their financial plans, as many already have.

The National Health Service is required to meet its operational standards as set out in the mandate and ensure access to appropriate care for all, in line with the NHS Constitution. It is right that the NHS should consider efficiency savings such as reducing delayed transfers of care, reducing running costs, or reviewing treatments that are of low clinical effectiveness – because this improves patient care overall.

The Capped Expenditure Process is an extension of the annual planning process, and as such the usual consultation requirements are unchanged in respect of any proposed major service reconfigurations. We also do not expect that this should affect the appropriate use or availability of patient data.