Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Young of Cookham on 13 November (HL2660), whether money paid to private health service providers for services commissioned by Clinical Commissioning Groups may be used to support the lobbying activities of those providers.

Contracts between clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and private and independent health service providers specify payment for a defined service, which the provider is required to provide within the resources allocated. The Government does not have any authority in relation to how independent sector providers choose to spend any surplus from CCG contracts. The use of any such surplus is bound by the private health service provider’s own governance procedures and the law.