Health and Social Care Select Committee 24 June 2019
- The Committee found that NHS England and NHS Improvement proposals for legislative changes to the Health and Social Care Act 2012 in many cases continue the direction of travel towards a more integrated collaborative and placed-based system. It broadly supports NHS England and NHS Improvement’s proposals to:
- to promote collaboration and lessen the role of competition in the NHS, especially the proposal to repeal section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and revoke the regulations made under it;
- remove the Competition and Market’s Authority’s role in mergers of foundation trusts;
- ease the burden procurement rules have placed on the NHS, ensuring commissioners have discretion over when to conduct a procurement process, with the inclusion of a ‘best value’ test; and
- allow greater flexibility locally over payment systems.
- However the Committee comments that the plans remains too NHS-centric rather than looking at the wider system with which it seeks to integrate and that the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement should be clearer about the roles local government, the voluntary and community sector and independent providers should play in the future of the NHS.
- Themes of the report are competition, integrated care, NHS leadership, and Cross-party endorsement of legislative proposals
