Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the public consultation process used was before the Capped Expenditure Process was introduced in each of the areas impacted.

As with all public services, local National Health Service areas need to live within the budget agreed – otherwise they effectively take up resources that could be spent on general practitioners, mental health care, and cancer treatment. As part of their financial planning, NHS England and NHS Improvement have been running a process to look at how a small number of areas could do more to balance their financial plans, as many already have. This is an extension of the annual national planning process and so no dedicated consultation has taken place. Where specific service changes that result from the process require public consultation, this will follow in the normal way.