NHS Funding Bill (2019-20)

TheNHS Funding Bill 2019-20was introduced to the House of Commons and given its formalFirst Readingon Wednesday 15 January 2020.

Metadata

Provider:

UK Parliament research

URL:

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8798

Retrieved on:

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Information

Tags:

National Health Service, Health, NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England, Articles, NHS Scotland, Government of the United Kingdom, Private medicine in the United Kingdom, Simon Stevens

Summary

Key Points:

TheNHS Funding Bill 2019-20was introduced to the House of Commons and given its formalFirst Readingon Wednesday 15 January 2020.
MPs will debate the Bill atSecond Readingon Monday 27 January 2020.

This additional funding seeks to help NHS England achieve the objectives of the NHS Long Term Plan, which was published in January 2019. The Plan set out how the NHS will develop over the next 10 years, including moves to more integrated care, a greater focus on prevention, and changes to ensure financial sustainability. The Plan also set out how the budget settlement for NHS England is to be spent over the next five years and includes commitments to:

increase investment in primary medical and community health services as a share of the total national NHS revenue spend across the five years from 2019/20 to 2023/24 (p.14)
target a higher share of funding towards geographies with high health inequalities (p.40)
ensure that funding for children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending (p. 50)
continue to balance the NHS’ books nationally and reducing year-on-year the number of trusts and CCGs individually in deficit, so that all NHS organisations are in balance by 2023/24 (p. 101); and
all efficiency gains being retained by the NHS and revisited in more and better care (p.103)

Under theNHS Funding Bill 2019-20, the Government commits to increase investment in the NHS in the years to 2024.
The Bill includes a double lock commitment that places a legal duty on both the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Treasury to uphold the minimum level of cash NHS revenue funding as outlined in the table below.
How the additional funding will be spent is a matter for NHS England, and has been set out in theNHS Long Term Plan(UK Government,NHS Funding Bill Enters Parliament).
The NHS funding settlement was originally announced by Theresa May in June 2018 (UK Government,PM Speech on the NHS, 18 June 2018) and aimed to provide the NHS with financial certainty to plan for the next decade.
In particular, these note that the first of the Bills two clauses will commit the Government to the following minimum level of cash funding for NHS England in each financial year up to 2023/24: Figure 1: Source:NHS Funding Bill 2019-20 Subsection (2) of clause 1 confers a duty on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ensure this funding is only used as revenue resource, rather than as capital resource.
NHS Long Term Plan The Long Term Plan noted that when agreeing the NHS funding settlement the government committed to ensure that adult social care funding is such that it does not impose any additional pressure on the NHS.
(p.31) Trends in NHS funding The House of Commons Library Briefing PaperNHS Funding and Expenditure(2019), provides further information on expenditure on the NHS since its foundation in 1948, comparisons in health spending across the UK, and real terms changes in UK health expenditure.