Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 18
5th Report - NHS financial sustainability
Published 29 Jan 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee NHS financial sustainability All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
NHSE informed us that it relies on primary care networks working with their local ICBs to identify harder to reach cohorts. It accepted that local authorities often have better links into communities than NHS bodies. It said many lessons were learned from the COVID-19 vaccination campaign about where take up was good and not so good, and how to reach populations that were not proactively coming forward.31 In its written submission to this 26 Q8 27 Q 9 28 Q 77 29 Q 45 30 Coronavirus and vaccine hesitancy, Great Britain - Office for National Statistics 31 Qq 45, 46 12 inquiry, NHS Providers noted that addressing the wider determinants of health had to involve specific targeted improvements in the most deprived areas to tackle health inequalities.32 32 NFS0012 13 2 Three big shifts required for the long-term sustainability of the NHS
From: Public Accounts Committee, 5th Report - NHS financial sustainability (HC 350), 29 January 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Fifth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Fifth report from Session 2024-25
Published 16 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with several of the Committee's recommendations, including on earlier planning guidance, productivity and capital-to-revenue switches, is still considering others, and disagrees with the recommendation on paperless providers.
- On planning, the government agrees that guidance should be issued earlier, with a target implementation date of December 2025. NHSE and DHSC are working so guidance is published "ideally before Christmas".
- On the ten-year plan, prevention spending definitions and community funding, the government "is considering" the recommendations and says it will notify the Committee of its response "when it is confirmed".
- The government agrees that NHSE should set out its productivity actions (target: Autumn 2025). It says the plan for productivity improvements from 2026-27 "will be set out following Phase 2 of the Spending Review".
- The government disagrees with the recommendation on paper reduction, saying it "does not agree that providers should be fully paperless" as some patient communications must be sent by letter. It expects trusts and ICBs "to restrict fax machine use".