Ms Pritchard announced her resignation on Monday 24 February, two days later The Guardian reported Government plans to cut staff at NHS England and merge some of its functions back into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
In two evidence sessions on 29 January Ms Pritchard was questioned first by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and then the Health and Social Care Select Committee (HSC).
The Public Accounts Committee report on NHS financial sustainability‘s findings included:
- NHS England’s payment mechanisms should recognise the work of GPs in attempting to increase vaccination uptake in hard to reach communities, rather than penalise such practices for having a lower overall uptake.
- NHS England’s delays in finalising budgets and issuing instructions to ICBs hampers their operations.
- There is a lack of readiness among senior health officials to take radical steps to make the NHS financially sustainable. Their recommendations on this point include preventing the use of transfers from capital to revenue budgets to fill financial holes.
- If the NHS is to move from sickness to prevention money will need to be moved between these two areas, including giving local systems autonomy to direct funding to areas of greatest impact. There needs to be a year-on-year increase in funding allocated to the community, particularly general practice and dentistry.
Following the session in which Ms Pritchard and others took questions relating to the report, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP (Con), the Chair, said in a statement on behalf of the Committee:
“The current Government has told the public that the NHS is broken. This will not come as news to NHS patients, nor to its hard-working staff across the country. Nor indeed does it to this Committee, which has long warned of the systemic issues plaguing the NHS, issues which the Government has transformative ambitions to address. We were aghast, then, to find amongst senior officials in charge of delivering these ambitions some of the worst complacency displayed to the PAC in my time serving on it.”
Later the same day the Health and Social Care Select Committee questioned Ms Pritchard on productivity, digital transformation, capital spending, workforce, and winter pressures.
Following the session, Layla Moran MP (Lib Dem), the Chair, said in a statement on behalf of the Committee:
“Following today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee, this morning’s evidence session was an opportunity for NHS leadership to prove their drive and dynamism. Regrettably, we were left disappointed and frustrated.
“We had hoped for a sharpness in witnesses’ responses but were exasperated by the lengthy and diffuse answers that were given to us and will be writing to them to seek the clarity that we expected to hear in the evidence session.”
The full transcript of the questions and answers from the evidence session is here.