Department of Health and Social Care spending to be debated in House of Commons main chamber

• Public Accounts Committee
• Health and Social Care Committee 

The Estimates Day Debate in the Commons main chamber, in which the Chairs of the two select committees will be the first to speak, will be an opportunity for Members to discuss the significant challenges that public health and care services face.  

The DHSC is one of the highest spending departments in the UK and the Autumn Budget took its overall budget up to £201.9bn. 

The PAC’s ‘NHS financial sustainability’ report warned in January that both DHSC and NHSE had seemed complacent regarding the NHS’s finances. It also found that NHSE is relying on the extremely optimistic assumption that it will achieve unprecedented productivity improvements of 2% each year by 2028–29, as part of the NHS’s recovery. 

Concerns have been repeatedly raised in the past by the PAC on the financial situation of both the DHSC and NHS England. Its report into DHSC’s 2022-23 Annual Report and Accounts found that adequate oversight was not in place to ensure strong financial management, while its 2020 report, NHS Capital expenditure and financial management,found that, pre-pandemic, the NHS had not made the transformation required to meet rising demand. 

The Health and Social Care Committee has also recently raised the issue of the NHS converting capital spend to resource, and the reprioritisation of resource from primary care and preventative service to acute services, during evidence sessions it has held on the 10 Year Health Plan, and in sessions with the Health Secretary and the Chief Executive of NHS England. 

Following the Health Committee’s January session with the CEO of NHSE, Amanda Pritchard, the Committee wrote to the NHS to ask for further information on how recent expenditure increases allocated to the NHS matched expected pressures from employer’s NIC, pension increases and forecast increases in demand. 

Further information

• About Parliament: Select committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees

Image: House of Commons