Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure there is adequate funding for the NHS.

We have already given the National Health Service certainty at the 2015 Spending Review, when we set annual budgets up to and including 2020-21. In doing so, the Government funded the NHS’s Five Year Forward View plan, with a £10 billion a year real terms increase in its budget by 2020-21.

As my Rt. hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced in her evidence to the Liaison Committee on 27 March, her intention is to come forward with a long-term plan (in advance of the next Spending Review) for the NHS, supported by a multi-year financial settlement to deliver that plan. The Government will work with NHS leaders, clinicians and experts to develop this long-term plan, to ensure that the NHS can cope with the serious demand and cost pressures it faces in the future.