Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the long-term financial sustainability of the current organisational and funding structures of the NHS.

The Government is committed to putting the National Health Service on a sustainable financial footing. The Government has taken the difficult decisions to protect and invest in the NHS. As announced at 2025 Budget, the Government is investing an additional £15 billion in NHS resource funding in real terms, a £29 billion cash increase, by 2028/29, compared with 2025/26. The 2025 Budget also confirmed that the Department’s capital budgets will rise to £15.2 billion by the end of the Spending Review period, 2029/30, to invest in the NHS and wider health infrastructure.

The Government’s assessment is that long-term financial sustainability requires reform alongside investment, as highlighted by Lord Darzi’s 2024 independent investigation into the NHS in England. In July 2025 the Government set out our plans for reform in the 10-Year Health Plan to ensure that the NHS has long-term sustainability by: shifting from hospital to community care through neighbourhood health to deliver care that is more cost-effective; shifting from analogue to digital with up to £10 billion of investment in NHS technology and transformation to boost productivity; and shifting from sickness to prevention to reduce demand on the health service.

The Government also announced in March 2025 that it will transform the centre of the health and care system, including through abolishing NHS England, following passage of legislation, subject to the will of Parliament. Along with renewing the role of integrated care boards as strategic commissioners, these reforms will cut bureaucracy and save more than £1 billion a year.