NHS: Finance

(asked on 21st June 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, who in his Department has lead responsibility for the new capped expenditure process in the NHS.


Answered by
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
This question was answered on 26th June 2017

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.

Since then, this Government has committed to increase NHS spending by a minimum of £8 billion in real terms over the next five years, and for the first time to deliver an increase in real funding per head of the population for every year of the parliament. As with all public services, the NHS needs to live within the budget agreed.

As the NHS itself has said, it is unfair if a small number of areas in effect take more than their fair share of that budget at the expense of other people’s hospital services, general practitioner care and mental health clinics elsewhere in the country. Although financial performance across the NHS has significantly improved over the past year, a few areas have not yet finalised their plans to keep within their budget, as the NHS is required to by the 2017/18 Government Mandate.

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