Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve financial control in the NHS.

There are clear plans in place for responding to the challenges faced by the National Health Service and to improve financial control, these include:

- Introducing a £1.8 billion Sustainability and Transformation Fund this year to support providers to move to a financially sustainable footing;

- Restoring financial discipline in the short term, beginning with the NHS England and NHS Improvement publication of ‘Strengthening Financial Performance & Accountability in 2016-17’, which sets out a wide-ranging, seven-point set of actions;

- Reducing demand for acute care in the longer term as set out in the Five Year Forward View; and

- Promoting efficiency and productivity in the provider sector - building on the work of Lord Carter, which has identified large variations in efficiency across non-specialist English acute hospitals, and controlling cost pressures.