Recommendation 7

With 23 days to go until the financial year end the UK Health Security Agency did not have an agreed budget for the new financial year. The Department established the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on 1 April 2021 as a new executive agency to be the UK leader for health protection responsible for ensuring the nation can respond quickly and at greater scale to deal with pandemics and future threats. Public Health England’s (PHE’s) health protection functions transferred into UKHSA on its abolition on 1 October 2021. On the same date, UKHSA also took over the functions of NHS Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre from the Department itself. The UKHSA budget for 2021–22 was approximately £15 billion. Despite UKHSA being up and running for a number of months, when we took evidence on 7 March 2022 the Department had still not agreed, and did not know when it would agree, a UKHSA budget for the 2022–23 financial year. Recommendation: The Department should not get into this position again and should write to the Committee to set out what steps it has put in place to ensure that all organisations it sponsors have a budget in place to allow sufficient time for financial planning for the year ahead. 8 Department of Health and Social Care 2020–21 Annual Report and Accounts