Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to his Answer of 26 June 2019 to Question 266189 NHS: Debts and with reference to NHS Improvement’s Quarterly performance of the NHS provider sector: quarter 2 2018/19, what assessment his Department has made of the validity of NHS Improvement’s statement that the Provider Sustainability Fund is non-recurrent funding; and what estimate he has made of the level of growth in the Provider Sustainability Fund in each of the next five years.

Funding that is made available through the Provider Sustainability Fund is a recurrent part of the NHS Long Term Plan funding settlement.

The way in which the funding is being deployed is however changing and this means it is non-recurrent at the level of individual providers. For example, there has been a £1.2 billion reduction in the Fund in 2019-20, but this remains available to the National Health Service and has been transferred to urgent and emergency care tariff prices and the Financial Recovery Fund.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have set out in this year’s NHS Operational Planning and Contracting Guidance that their ambition is that this will be the last year of Provider Sustainability Funding.