Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of whether NHS Shared Business Services has produced ongoing lower costs for the NHS since its sale.

NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) is a joint venture company that is in approximately equal ownership between the Department and the multi-national outsourcing company, SopraSteria. It provides a range of services for National Health Service customers in the following broad areas:

- Finance and Accounting;

- Employment services, including Payroll and

- Procurement.

It currently holds altogether 116 provider and 69 commissioner contracts for providing these services. It also provides the Integrated Single Financial Environment (a platform to process all non-pay spend) to all clinical commissioning groups across the country. In the main the work is won as a result of the trusts and other NHS bodies requiring the services running tendering processes with SBS and other suppliers being invited to tender, along with an in-house option where the services are not already outsourced. Where SBS wins contracts it has therefore won them on the basis of offering savings compared to the other alternatives.

SBS has, in the last 12 months, won 82 contract renewals and 13 new contracts. Ongoing customer-side management of these contracts and assurance of any savings is a matter for the NHS customers of SBS.

Using a methodology agreed with the National Audit Office, the Company’s most recently audited accounts for the year end 2016 state that over £400 million of savings to the NHS have been achieved to date.