Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the absence of a manpower and recruitment plan, what steps the NHS takes to forecast its spending needs for the year ahead.

NHS England and NHS Improvement published the ‘2022/23 priorities and operational planning guidance’ on 24 December 2021. This is supplemented by technical guidance on the associated financial assumptions on which the National Health Service should plan. Individual systems plan spending for the year against allocations in response to this guidance and submit plans to NHS England and NHS Improvement to aggregate into an overall NHS financial plan. We expect the NHS to manage their spend within the overall budget in the Mandate.