NHS Confederation responds to PAC report on use of private finance for infrastructure

Responding to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the government's use of private finance for infrastructure, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said:

“Capital funding is going to be essential if the NHS is going to make the improvements and reforms necessary to put it on a sustainable long-term footing. We have welcomed the government’s commitment to explore public private partnerships to inject more capital funding into the health service. But the committee is right that having a long pipeline of work for private investors is vital if we are going to get value for money for the taxpayer. 

“That is why we think the government needs to go further and faster than it has set out in the recent Ten-Year Health Plan to allow local leaders to develop infrastructure projects that, when added up, create a significant national pipeline to improve learning and bring down costs. Empowering systems and local leaders to kickstart these plans will not only start to address the decade of capital underinvestment in the NHS but it can also potentially kickstart growth and jobs as well.”