A £1.25 bn ‘package’ of additional investment to boost mental healthcare services, the introduction of an Apprenticeship Voucher ‘to put employers in control of the government funding for the training apprentices need’, and a four year, £20 m investment to fund establishment of four pilot ‘Connected Health Cities’ (Leeds/Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle, and Liverpool), were among measures unveiled in George Osborne’s 2015 Budget on 18 March.
The HM Treasury Budget 2015 report, which the Chancellor laid before Parliament on opening his Budget Speech, noted the 2014 Autumn Statement’s announcement of £2 bn in additional funding for frontline NHS services in 2015-2016 – ‘to help meet growing demand, improve services, and kick-start the transformation set out in the NHS’s Five Year Forward View’. The ‘Five Year Forward View’ had also made explicitly clear, however, that the NHS would need to find ‘significant’ annual efficiency savings ‘to meet demand and maintain good quality patient care’.
Lord Carter, as chair of the NHS Procurement and Efficiency Board, is already, the Budget 2015 document notes, ‘undertaking action to help the NHS deliver its efficiency aspiration’; interim findings from his work show that ‘action in a number of areas’, including procurement, pharmacy, and property, ‘could deliver significant savings that the NHS could recycle back into frontline care’. For example, local savings ‘of up to £5 million annually’ were found in one Trust simply by improving contract management, and ‘by engaging with suppliers to find ways to resist cost increases’.
