Recommendation 3

NHS funding has increased, but to deliver key priorities such as elective and cancer recovery it will need to be spent in the most cost-effective way. The Department has allocated £14 billion to NHSE from 2022–23 to 2024–25 specifically to recover elective and cancer care. This comprises £8 billion of resource funding and £5.9 billion of capital funding. The Autumn Statement 2022 committed an additional £3.3 billion in 2023–24 and 2024–25 to the NHS budget as a whole. NHSE told us this would be sufficient for the NHS to deliver its key priorities. However, NHSE 6 Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England has opted not to produce a detailed costed version of its recovery plan to show how it expects all of the £14 billion to be spent. Without timely evaluation of its programmes, including surgical hubs and clinical diagnostic centres, there is a risk that the future allocation of resources will not be informed by reality on the ground. Overall, the NHS has a problem with reduced productivity. An internal review by NHS England estimated that the NHS was around 16% less productive in 2021 than in 2019 and said that the immediate effects of the pandemic were not the only cause. Recommendation: NHSE should transparently describe how the additional funds for elective recovery have been allocated. Alongside the Treasury Minute response, it should also write to us providing details of the programmes on which it expects the £14 billion to be spent, the independent evaluations it has put in place to monitor the effectiveness of additional spending, and how it expects additional spending to improve NHS productivity.