The UK’s new Health and Care Bill was introduced to the House of Commons today, in a bid to deliver more joined up care. 

However it faces criticism from independent think tanks, the Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust for plans to make NHS England more accountable to the government. 

Under the reforms, Integrated Care Boards (ICB) and Integrated Care Partnerships (ICP) will be responsible for bringing together local government and NHS services in England, such as social care, mental health and public health services. 

The Bill also includes plans for a new NHS and public health procurement regime and to improve delivery of social care services through new assurance and data sharing measures, updated legal framework to enable person-centred models of hospital discharge and increased powers for the secretary of state to make direct payments to adult social care providers.

WHY IT MATTERS

The Bill plans builds on proposals in the NHS Long Term Plan to make health and care services less bureaucratic, more accountable, and more integrated in the wake of COVID-19.

THE LARGER CONTEXT 

The reforms were outlined in the Queen’s speech in May following an announcement in February by former health secretary Matt Hancock.

ON THE RECORD

Health secretary Sajid Javid said: “To help meet demand, build a better health service and bust the backlog, we need to back the NHS, as it celebrates its 73rd birthday this week, and embed lessons learned from the pandemic. This will support our health and care services to be more integrated and innovative so the NHS can deliver for people in the decades to come.”

Sir Simon Stevens, NHS chief executive, said: “This Bill contains widely supported proposals for integrated care, which have been developed and consulted on over recent years by the NHS itself. They go with the grain of what our staff and patients can see is needed, by removing outdated and bureaucratic legal barriers to joined-up working between GPs, hospitals, and community services.”

Dr Jennifer Dixon, Health Foundation chief executive, said: “Provisions to boost integrated care have widespread support and could help improve care for patients, although the potential benefits of these changes should not be oversold. The part of the Bill giving the Secretary of State more power over the NHS is politically driven, has no clear rationale and risks taking health care backwards.”

Nigel Edwards, Nuffield Trust chief executive, said: “There is a clear logic to the parts of this Bill that would allow the NHS to collaborate more, as it has been trying to do for years in the face of the unhelpful 2012 Health and Social Care Act. But unfortunately these changes are bundled up with new powers for politicians to control the detail of how the health service runs. The evidence of the past suggests this may lead to worse decisions, and they will come to regret it.”