Ed Humpherson, Director General for Regulation, Office for Statistics Regulation writes to Tom Orford, Head of Profession for Statistics, HM Treasury.
Dear Tom,
We have been discussing with you the separation of spending on NHS England from total health spending in the Treasury’s Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis (PESA) publication.
I was pleased to hear that in July this year PESA will include NHS England outturn data as a subset of the total health spend. I am also very encouraged that you have committed to working with Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to present NHS England planned spend data on a comparable basis for that same PESA publication. We are very grateful for the constructive way you, your colleagues and DHSC took this matter forward.
I hope that presenting the PESA statistics in this way will bring more clarity to discussions about public spending.
I will write to the BMA, and the Shadow Secretary for Health and Care as well as to Dr Sarah Wollaston MP, Chair of the House of Commons Health Select Committee about these developments as they had raised concerns about health spending following the publication of the last Spending Review.
Yours sincerely,
Ed Humpherson