Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to issue new guidance to NHS Trusts advising them not to set up wholly owned subsidiary companies to avoid paying VAT.

The current NHS England guidance dated February 2024, titled Guidance for assuring and supporting complex change – subsidiaries guidance for trusts forming or changing a subsidiary, sets out the VAT position of wholly owned subsidiaries and confirms that “the commercial rationale is not dependent on the subsidiary enabling a VAT treatment that differs from the trust’s current arrangements”.

There are no plans for this guidance to be updated.