I am today laying in Parliament the Government 2023 mandate to NHS England. The Government have promised to cut NHS waiting lists, meaning that people can get the care they need more quickly. That promise is at the very heart of this mandate, which will help us deliver for patients, and we are delivering. To support delivery, the Government have made up to £14.1 billion available for health and social care over the next two years, on top of record funding to improve elective, urgent and emergency, and primary care performance.
In February 2022, NHS England published its delivery plan for tackling the covid-19 backlog of elective care. This set out a clear vision for how the NHS will recover and expand elective care and cancer services in the next three years. Since its publication, hard-working health and care staff have made great progress in recovering elective care despite continued pressures from covid-19, flu and industrial action. The NHS succeeded in meeting the ambition to virtually eliminate waits of two years or more in July 2022, and reduced by over 90% from the peak the number of patients waiting 78 weeks or more by April 2023. Patients will also get more choice about where they have treatment. Alongside this, I have set out that the NHS must recover the cancer backlog to pre-pandemic levels and go further to improve one-year and five-year survival for all cancers, achieved by maintaining and improving performance against the 62 and 31-day standards; diagnosing cancers faster and earlier; and continuing work to expand diagnostic capacity.
In January 2023, we published the delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services, reduce waiting times, and improve patient experience. I want to see a system that provides more and better care in people’s homes, gets ambulances to people more quickly when they need them, sees people faster when they go to hospital and helps people safely leave hospital having received the care they need.
And in May 2023, the delivery plan for recovering access to primary care was published, committing to tackle the 8 am rush and make it easier and quicker for patients to get the help they need from primary care through empowering patients, implementing modern general practice access by making sure patients are either given an appointment immediately when they call or signposted to a more appropriate service, building capacity, and cutting bureaucracy. Later this year, subject to consultation, the NHS will enable patients to access prescription medication directly from a pharmacy, without a GP appointment, for common conditions such as earache, sore throat or urinary tract infections.
All of the above priorities will be enabled by supporting the workforce and by accelerating digitalisation, and this will also support ongoing delivery of the NHS long-term plan, including on maternity and neonatal services, mental health services and prevention. The NHS will need to support the workforce through delivering the long-term workforce plan, and building on the functions formerly held by Health Education England: training, retention, and modernising the way staff work. Following the merger of NHS Digital and NHS England, I have also asked the NHS to do more to utilise the power of technology and the skills, leadership and culture that underpins it, to drive a new era of digital transformation. This will allow the health and care system to thrive long into the future, delivering vast benefits for patients—such as using AI to give better treatment, the latest screening techniques to detect illness sooner and equipment that allows more people to be treated at home.
The mandate meets my duties under section 13A of the NHS Act 2006 to set out objectives that NHS England should seek to meet in carrying out their functions. It will apply from today until the date it is replaced. The mandate complements the general duties on NHS England to provide a comprehensive health service with planning and prioritisation done by integrated care boards and integrated care partnerships for their areas.
I have listened to what the health system has asked for: fewer, focused priorities, giving systems clarity on what I am asking them to deliver. This mandate is deliberately shorter than the previous mandate and both emphasises the Government commitment to delivery on the public’s key concerns while allowing integrated care systems the freedom to deliver effectively. The NHS provides a comprehensive health service, and by focusing on these priorities, we can help to make sure everyone gets the treatment they need.
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