Recommendation 27

The NHS Long Term Plan states that ill health prevention helps the public to stay healthy, as well as moderating demands on the NHS. The Department recognised in its 2023–24 Annual Report that there “is still much work to do to make a shift towards prevention in the NHS”.43 We observed that, with the exception of a very short paragraph, the Department’s 2023–24 Annual Report does not include a section on preventative work, or information on outcomes arising from this spend. We asked the Department to ensure that next year’s accounts had more importance paid to prevention, which it agreed to.44 We also commented that it was difficult to find information in its Annual Report and Accounts on how much the Department was spending on palliative and end–of–life care, or what outcomes this spend was delivering, which felt like a “huge omission”. The Department was unable to provide a figure for this spending on our session, but told us that it would “definitely change that for next year … [and] add more prominence to it”.45