Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Markham on 27 November (HL409–HL412), why the NHS Gloucestershire integrated care boards' lessons learnt report has not been published, and what assessment they have made of the public interest in publishing it following the High Court’s decision in Consultant Connect Limited v NHS Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board, NHS Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board, NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board [2022] EWHC 2037 (TCC), to ensure that procurement processes are followed properly by integrated care boards and without “considerable organisational bias”.

Each commissioning organisation involved in the procurement process produced their own lessons learnt report. Decisions around the publication of ‘lessons learned reports’ are for individual integrated care boards (ICBs).

With reference to guidance and support to ICBs on procurement, NHS England published the Strategic framework for the NHS Commercial Sector on 28 November 2023, a copy of which is attached.

The framework aims to encourage regional collaboration between integrated care systems (ICSs) by creating regional collaborative commercial organisations. These will operate as group procurement organisations in providing the necessary system leadership, capability and capacity to deliver strategic commercial outcomes and supply chain efficiencies, and be designed against a national blueprint to ensure consistency.

Every National Health Service provider will be expected to be a member of a collaborative organisation; and a senior, experienced, qualified commercial leader will be appointed to run and promote each organisation at an executive-level, with ownership for commercial strategy and all non-pay spend.