Health & Social Care
156mentions · last 12 months↓
View full analysis →The Health and Social Care Committee scrutinises the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, and related public bodies. Operating as a House of Commons select committee, it conducts detailed inquiries through oral evidence sessions with witnesses including senior NHS leaders, government officials, and external experts. The committee's recent work has focused on NHS estate management and the neighbourhood health public-private partnership model, examining how the health service maintains and develops its physical infrastructure. It has also investigated corridor care and patient safety, taking evidence from the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch and NHS leaders on systemic pressures within hospital services. Additionally, the committee has examined weight management services and obesity medicines available through NHS hubs, scrutinising access to pharmacological treatments and the commissioning of specialist services.
32 sessions published in the last 12 months · busiest week: w/c 8 Sept (2 sessions)
Click any cell in the heatmap to see the sessions held that day and the insights extracted from them.
424 insights
15 Jul 2026
The Committee scrutinised two maternity-safety reviews: Baroness Amos’s National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation and Donna Ockenden’s Nottingham review. The evidence focused on failures to listen to women, families and staff; unsafe culture and leadership; poor estates; workforce shortages and burnout; racism and discrimination; interpretation and trauma-informed care; and weak regulation, especially by the CQC. Both witnesses pressed for rapid implementation of recommendations, with Amos urging acceptance of the full package and Ockenden warning that the six-month action-plan timetable is too slow. A maternity and neonatal commissioner was welcomed in principle, but both emphasised that it must be statutory, independent, well-resourced and able to compel data and drive accountability.
08 Jul 2026
The Committee scrutinised the Department’s priorities across NHS reform, prevention, social care, vaccination, mental health, maternity, cancer, digital technology and major commercial arrangements. James Murray defended the Government’s strategy of combining investment with reform, stressed productivity gains from AI and digital rollout, and backed continued expansion of neighbourhood health and prevention. The session exposed repeated refusals to give firm figures or dates on the UK-US pharma deal, vaccination recovery, the workforce plan, the Hughes redress response and some implementation plans, while also extracting commitments on the maternity commissioner, fracture liaison services, the new hospitals programme, and follow-up on capital budgets, Palantir and SEND/local authority guidance.
01 Jul 2026
The Committee scrutinised whether the neighbourhood health service can be delivered through current primary care and wider community estates, and what blocks new neighbourhood health centres. Witnesses argued that many GP premises are too old or too small for multidisciplinary working, that underutilisation claims are misleading without accounting for clinical demand and safety requirements, and that district valuation, premises reimbursement rules and annual capital constraints are major barriers. There was strong support for GPs leading local service integration, but also for working with pharmacies, councils and VCSE organisations. Witnesses called for multi-year capital, more delegation, transparent district valuer methodology, and a broader community-health estate strategy rather than an NHS-estate-first approach.
24 Jun 2026
The Committee scrutinised the Casey Commission and the Government’s parallel plans for adult social care reform, with a strong focus on whether a national care service can be defined, how integration with the NHS should work, and whether local authorities should retain a direct role in strategic decision-making. Baroness Casey said phase 1 would report this year, that the commission would launch a public conversation in July, and that everything from funding models to personal accounts and insurance was in scope. Minister Stephen Kinnock confirmed the Government’s commitment to a national care service, backed the ‘by 2028’ deadline as a deadline not a target, accepted that phase 2 must address the fiscal envelope and all funding options, and promised to write to the Committee on the local authority/ICB issue. The session also extracted firm commitments on a dementia tsar, a dementia and frailty modern service framework by the end of 2026, a front-door redesign for care assessments, and action on workforce pay, pathways and visa exploitation.
16 Jun 2026
The Committee scrutinised the NHS Federated Data Platform’s purpose, its benefits for operational management, the extent of adoption, and the risks of supplier lock-in, data governance and public trust. Witnesses on panel 1 argued the FDP can improve data integration, but cautioned that benefits are uneven and hard to evaluate; they also stressed open standards, NHS ownership of the canonical data model, and the need for public trust. Ministers and officials on panel 2 defended the Palantir-backed rollout as a capability procurement, said NHS data remains under NHS control, acknowledged review and exit planning, and confirmed there is no automatic rollover decision. The session also exposed tensions over whether the rollout is genuinely optional for trusts, whether current adoption targets amount to de facto mandation, and whether NHS digital capacity is sufficient to manage future procurement or any transition away from Palantir.
10 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised the causes of worsening children’s and young people’s mental health, the strain on CAMHS, and how to shift care upstream into schools and communities. Witnesses argued for early support hubs, mental health support teams, stronger cross-Government action, and a whole-school approach. They also pressed for tougher social media regulation and safety-by-design, while the Children’s Commissioner highlighted postcode lotteries in spend and waiting times, the need for a distinct diagnosis pathway for neurodevelopmental conditions, and a joint outcomes framework linking health and education.
08 Jul 2026