Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 24
25th Report - DHSC Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24
Published 14 May 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee DHSC Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Department was renamed the Department of Health and Social Care (from the Department of Health) in January 2018, with the intention of delivering a greater focus on adult social care.We observed that social care is only reflected in “a lot of little bits” in the Department’s Annual Reports and Accounts. We therefore asked how social care delivery for users was being improved. NHS England told us that “a lot of work is already going on” including moving towards having joint social care and NHS assessment teams. It explained that this created a single process for assessing the care package needed for each patient and how it should be delivered, which should also result in earlier discharge from hospital. It also told us that it had undertaken work over the last 18 months to consider how it could improve intermediate care, focusing on physical rehabilitation when patients were leaving hospital, which it planned to roll out in 2026.40
From: Public Accounts Committee, 25th Report - DHSC Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 (HC 639), 14 May 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenty-fifth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 14 July 2025).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenth-fifth report from Session 2024-26
Published 18 September 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees" with each of the Committee's recommendations and gives target implementation dates ranging from "Recommendation implemented" to "to be advised".
- On the transfer of NHS England's functions, it agrees to share its plan and timetable, and says information on the size of resource functions "is likely to be confirmed in Autumn 2025".
- On the Annual Report and Accounts, it "plans to cover" the areas listed in the 2024-25 report and will update the Committee in September 2025.
- On publishing accounts before summer recess, it will write in September 2025 with detail on its multi-year plan, saying audit firms have indicated they lack capacity for pre-recess laying "in the shorter-term".
- On clinical negligence costs, it says ministers "will examine" the drivers of costs and "the potential merits of reform options", with the implementation date "to be advised".