Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government why a contract worth £8 million for IT consultancy is required to support the abolition of NHS England and the transfer of many of its functions to the Department of Health and Social Care.

We inherited two head offices for the National Health Service, one for NHS England and one for the Department of Health and Social Care, and with two organisations comes two sets of corporate IT systems.

This two-year contract will maximise efficiency and boost productivity by designing and integrating the Department and NHS England’s corporate IT functions to create one single system following the merger.

All Government contracts are robustly assessed to ensure they deliver value for the taxpayer.