Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the commitment in the NHS Long Term Plan to reduce administrative costs by £700 million across commissioners and providers, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of jobs as a result of that reduction.

The NHS Long Term Plan is a 10-year strategy for our National Health Service. It sets out how the NHS will spend the £20.5 billion a year real terms annual increase going into the NHS budget by 2023/24.

It is important that every additional penny of funding is being well spent. Through year-on-year improvements in efficiency and productivity, the NHS will continue to cut waste from the system. This includes delivering savings of over £700 million by 2023/24 across providers and commissioner administrative costs to ensure that an increasing share of the NHS budget is invested in frontline services including additional frontline workforce.

Local health systems will be expected to engage with their local communities and delivery partners in developing local plans in 2019, setting out proposals for how they will deliver the outcomes in the Long Term Plan. These will be brought together in a detailed national implementation programme by the autumn.