Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:01 pm on 18 December 2018.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care
3:01,
18 December 2018
I am not familiar with the type of insurance the noble Lord is talking about, but would be delighted to see what he has been offered. The 2012 Act obliges income from non-NHS activities to be tied to a foundation trust’s principal purpose, which is,
“the provision of goods and services for the purposes of the health service of England”,
and that is the standard by which it should be held. He is right that waiting lists have been growing. The NHS is doing more than ever—2 million more operations in 2017-18 than in 2010—but we realise that we need to do more, which is why the Prime Minister made the historic commitment to increase funding in the NHS by £20 billion in real terms in five years’ time.