Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has made an assessment of the value for money of the Federated Data Platform contract and (b) the extent to which FDP procurement complies with the guidance entitled Managing public money.

The Federated Data Platform (FDP) business case includes an assessment of the investment, the benefits anticipated, and the return of investment anticipated over the lifetime of the programme. Benefits are provided for cash, non-cash, and societal benefits and throughout the approval process were assessed by several independent assessors from both NHS England, the Department and other Government departments to ensure that investments provide value. The FDP is a Tier A Government Major Projects Portfolio programme and therefore will be required to report on the return on investment and benefits realised throughout the lifetime of the programme, to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.

NHS England has conducted a fair, open, and transparent procurement in line with Public Contracts Regulations 2015. They used the Competitive Dialogue Process, which is in line with both Cabinet Office guidance and HM Treasury guidance Managing Public Money. This process was open for any supplier to participate, subject to passing the standard selection criteria and minimum requirements. All bids were evaluated against the same objective evaluation criteria and scoring methodology which was shared with all suppliers. The evaluation criteria were developed to mitigate against unfair incumbent advantage. Over 30 independent evaluators were selected from across the National Health Service with a range of skills and experience relevant to the question they were evaluating.