Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Lord O’Shaughnessy’s statement on the BBC Daily Politics on 18 June 2018 that the scheduled £22bn of NHS efficiency savings are on target, if he will place in the Library (a) an assessment of efficiency savings made by the NHS since 2015 and (b) an estimate of the total value of efficiency savings made by the NHS since 2015.

The National Health Service’s ‘Next Steps on the Five Year Forward View’ document sets out a 10 point plan for how efficiencies in Spending Review 2015 will be delivered. Progress on the 10 point efficiency plan is being monitored through provider Cost Improvement Programmes (CIPs), and commissioner Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention plans (QIPPs). These are not directly comparable to the original £22 billion savings target. That is because the £22 billion was the best estimate of savings at the time of the Spending Review 2015 settlement, but subsequent changes in activity, inflation, workforce and other factors have altered counterfactuals and calculations of efficiency opportunities. Nor do CIPs/QIPPs include an estimate of the savings from public sector pay restraint. The total value of efficiency savings made in this Spending Review period using CIPs/QIPPs is shown in the following table.

Copies of NHS England’s board paper on their consolidated 2017/18 year end position, and NHS Improvement’s publication on performance in the provider sector for 2017/18 are attached. These include a more detailed assessment of CIP and QIPP delivery for that year.