Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 6 March 2019 to Question 227413 on Tomography: Inhealthcare, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of the procurement process for PET-CT scanning services in England.

The Phase II PET-CT Scanning Services procurement commenced on 10 July 2017 and 10 of the 11 contracts are expected to be awarded in the next four weeks. The exception to this is Lot 4, covering the Thames Valley - Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West area, where discussions between the parties involved are still underway.

NHS England has undertaken two phases of procurement for PET-CT services in England, the first completed during 2014-15 and the second is nearing completion. In both cases, NHS England either has or is on-track to secure significantly improved value, both in the form of additional capital investment into new scanners and new scanning locations, and in terms of reduced price to NHS England. As the Phase II process is still underway, it is not possible to make a final assessment of the cost of procurement. However, these will represent a small proportion of the overall forecast benefits.

NHS England undertook a public engagement process between January and February 2016 which was designed to test the phase II procurement approach. The results of this process were incorporated into the final procurement design over the course of 2016/17. A thematic report of the response to public engagement was published in 2017, shortly before the phase II procurement commenced. The report can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/pet-ct-engagement-report-april-2017.pdf

NHS England intends to undertake any further required public involvement duties in respect of planned changes in the location of services following completion of the procurement and in accordance with its responsibilities as described in section 13Q of the NHS Act 2006.