Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of working with commercial suppliers whose senior leadership have expressed overt political affiliations on the reputation of NHS England.

Commercial contracts awarded by the Department, NHS England, or other National Health Service bodies are held with a company rather than individuals.

NHS bodies set their own policies on how to award contracts, but they must do so in line with the law, specifically the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and now the Procurement Act 2023 which came into force in February 2025, and central policy. The Government uses a standard selection questionnaire that requires suppliers to confirm they meet certain standards. Suppliers can be excluded for a variety of reasons, including where they are guilty of grave professional misconduct or where they have shown significant or persistent deficiencies in the performance under a prior public contract. Full guidance on the Procurement Specific Questionnaire, which replaces the standard selection questionnaire under the Public Contract Regulations, can be found on the Government Commercial Function’s Procurement Pathways website.