Plans
The NHS today helps more people to receive higher quality care than ever before. The Government is backing the NHS with an additional £10 billion per annum investment by the end of this Parliament and the employment of record numbers of doctors and nurses.
Nonetheless, the NHS faces substantial challenges, and the Government is doing a great deal to help meet these through a combination of increased financial commitment and bold reforms. The Five Year Forward View, produced by the NHS itself, sets out its own vision for the future. Its vision is one where the NHS provides more care closer to home, prioritises prevention and empowers citizens with the tools and information to manage their own care.
In each of 44 local areas, commissioners, providers and local authorities have come together to decide how to improve services and realise this vision. Far from being secret, STPs were publicly announced by NHS England in December 2015. These plans are not about making cuts, but to ensure that increased resources for the NHS lead directly to better care for patients.
First draft plans have been submitted to NHS England who are scrutinising them and providing feedback and a more formal process of local consultation is expected to begin later this year. Only plans which are ambitious, realistic and set out a clear case for how patients will benefit will be approved. The plans will then be published with full public engagement and consultation and no changes to the services people currently receive will be made without this. Furthermore, the Government is committed to ensuring full transparency and accountability about how the plans are being implemented.
Transparency
The Government has committed to ensuring transparency in the NHS procurement process. That is why NHS England has recently undergone a transformation of its commercial and procurement functions.
It is the responsibility of NHS England and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to make decisions to award contracts to providers of NHS services. This means, in essence, that local doctors are in charge of decisions about who provides the care for their local communities. In doing so, they must ensure that they act proportionately, transparently, fairly and in the interest of patients, and that all potential conflicts of interest for those involved in awarding contracts are declared and managed appropriately at the outset of the process. They must also publish details of that contract award.
NHS Improvement must ensure that CCGs follow NHS regulations on procurement, patient choice and competition, and have powers of investigation if these are not followed.
I am afraid that I am unable to speculate as to the potential award of particular contracts as this is a matter for NHS England and CCGs.