Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether a formal assessment of the effect of awarding the contract for provision of muscular skeletal services to Circle Health at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trusts was carried out by (a) Greenwich Clinical Commissioning Group and (b) NHS England.

The procurement of local health services by means of competitive tendering is a matter for the local National Health Service.

NHS England is accountable for ensuring that the health services which both it and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) commission are of high quality and deliver value for money. The CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework has been designed to provide confidence to internal and external stakeholders and the wider public that CCGs are operating effectively to commission safe, high-quality and sustainable services within their resources.

We are informed by NHS England that Greenwich CCG follows standard NHS procurement procedures and that these procedures were followed for this procurement. We understand that the detailed clinical service specification will be used to hold the provider to account within the format of the NHS national standard contract.

We are further advised that this procurement has been subject to NHS England’s assurance process for this type of contract.