By Tash Shifrin
28 January 2010
The NHS chief executive has admitted to MPs that it will be a ‘tough call’ to find the planned £15bn to £20bn of efficiency savings by 2013/14.
Sir David Nicholson first suggested last year that efficiency savings of this scale would be needed to deal with the tighter financial climate. The figure has since been cited in the chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report, which set a requirement for £10bn savings by 2012/13 as an interim step.
But asked about his figures by the Commons health select committee, Nicholson said they were ‘not meant to be scientific’. The efficiency total was a ‘broad brush’ figure based on a standstill NHS budget and assumptions about demographic changes, historic growth in demand for services, recommendations on new drug treatments, workforce and pay issues and policies that had been announced by ministers but not yet implemented, Nicholson said.
He told the MPs the target was ‘undoubtedly extraordinarily challenging’, adding: ‘We’ve never done anything like this before in the NHS.’ But the health service had not previously been as well set up by past years of funding growth, he added.
‘We’re coming to the end of the delivery of the big national targets that drove expenditure... [and] have over the last two years improved the delivery of efficiency,’ Nicholson said. But he added: ‘It is a very tough call for the NHS as a whole.’
MPs at the committee hearing on January 21 also quizzed officials about a range of as yet uncosted initiatives announced by the government, including the national dementia strategy and improved maternity services.
Department of Health permanent secretary Sir Hugh Taylor said each initiative would be costed before it was launched.
