Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy not to introduce user charges or insurance-based funding or hold an inquiry into introducing such changes into the NHS during the course of this Parliament.

There is no plan to launch an inquiry into the way that the National Health Service is funded. The Government remains committed to the principles of the NHS, enshrined in the NHS Constitution, that access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not the ability to pay, and we have previously ruled out introducing changes.