Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to page 53 of Next Steps on the Five Year Forward View, published in March 2017, to which organisations and geographies the statement that some organisations and geographies have historically been substantially overspending their fair share of NHS funding refers.

The National Health Service as a whole faces financial challenges, and there are specific health economies where those challenges are more acute as evidenced by the financial performance of individual commissioner and provider organisations.

The Government mandates NHS England to ensure financial balance across the NHS. The NHS cannot spend more than what it is allocated by Parliament.

In January 2016 NHS England published details of funding allocations for each clinical commissioning group (CCG) area. As a result of NHS England’s allocation decisions, no CCG area is now more than 5% under its target (“fair share”) allocation.

However, NHS England acknowledged in its delivery plan ‘Five Year Forward View: Next Steps’ that more will need to be done around the financial challenges facing the NHS. The document sets out a 10 point care and efficiency programme to meet the joint challenges of maintaining financial stability while delivering the best health service in the world.