Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much NHS trusts in England spent on medical devices and consumables purchased outside the NHS Supply Chain in 2025-26; and what proportion of total spend on those items that represented.

Based on available NHS Spend Comparison Service data, National Health Service trusts in England are estimated to have spent approximately £8.8 billion on secondary care medical technology products and consumables. Full-year data for 2025/26 was not available, so data covering 1 October 2025 to 1 October 2026 has been used as a proxy.

NHS Supply Chain reported a market share of 67.7% for 2025/26, as set out in its Annual Report and Accounts. However, the scope and methodology underpinning these figures differ, meaning they cannot be directly compared to reliably estimate either the value or proportion of NHS trust expenditure outside NHS Supply Chain.

The Department does not hold information on the level of variation in prices paid by NHS trusts, or the difference between average and lowest prices. While the Department has considered Spend Comparison Service data on prices paid for medical devices and consumables, differences in products, purchasing arrangements and transactions mean that variation, average and lowest observed prices are not directly comparable within product categories. For the same reasons, it is not possible to reliably estimate the savings that could be achieved if NHS trusts paid the lowest available national price, as prices also reflect purchasing volumes and contractual arrangements, and the lowest price observed in transactional data does not represent a price available to every NHS trust.