Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the reliance of the NHS on Microsoft products and cloud services; and what steps they are taking to ensure resilience and competition in the procurement of digital infrastructure.

No such assessment has taken place.

The Government Commercial Agency acts for the Government to ensure there is resilience and competition in the choice of suppliers available to public sector bodies such as the National Health Service. This is through management of the Crown Commercial Service’s data and digital framework agreements which maintain a range of suppliers, organised by different skills and functions, from which organisations like the NHS use to ‘call-off’ work for specific contracts.

In line with the Procurement Act 2023, all Government framework agreements are awarded in line with the principles of openness, fairness, and transparency, and for data and digital contracts, commercial experts use contract terms, data protection requirements, data protection impact assessments, cyber checks, and the Digital, Data and Technology Playbook to assess suppliers. The right test is whether a supplier can meet the NHS’s requirements on safety, data protection, security, service quality, and value for money.