Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many members of the public were consulted as part of the stakeholder engagement on changes to the NHS payment scheme.

NHS England is following standard procedure in its consultation on the NHS Payment Scheme. While the consultation’s objection thresholds apply only to commissioners and providers of National Health Service funded services, the consultation accepts responses from any interested parties and members of the general public.

On publication, all providers and commissioners affected by the proposals were sent details of the consultation, and were asked to respond.

As well as publishing the documents on NHS England’s website, the consultation was also publicly available on NHS England’s consultation hub, which is available at the following link:

https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/

An email to highlight the consultation was also sent to over 4,300 people, including those from representative bodies, charities, and other voluntary, community, and social enterprise organisations, who had registered for updates about the payment system or had joined the Payment System Support FutureNHS. A reminder was also sent out a week before the consultation closed.

NHS England also promoted the consultation alongside the consultation on the NHS Standard Contract, contacting approximately 2,000 people from NHS organisations, local authorities, voluntary sector organisations, and other interested parties. Of the responses that were received regarding the consultation, 621 were from the general public, namely individuals who did not specify an organisation.