Lord Agnew of Oulton

HM Treasury (HMT) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) initiated a formal review of the sector classification in 2024 of CCS as part of their ongoing programme of assessments of the statistical and financial reporting classification of public sector bodies in the National Accounts. The ONS completed the final review in October 2024 and published the outcome on its website. It concluded that CCS’s existing sector classification as a public corporation is correct. This means that CCS will remain a Trading Fund.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/developmentofpublicsectorfinancestatistics/september2024

The Deed of Variation to contract 2887470\5, enables the transition of the Emergency Planning College (EPC) to the UK Resilience Academy from 15 April 2025 to deliver strategic national resilience training and exercising outcomes.

Given the complexities of the contract covering the management of the physical site, coupled with the provision of training services, the Authority determined that a medium-term permitted extension would allow for better development and planning for a new competitive procurement opportunity, whilst maintaining continuity of key services.

The contract provides for an extension of not less than 2-years and not more than 5-years, and does not include any financial values or thresholds. The extension does not change the economic balance of the Agreement in favour of the Contractor. International sales were covered within the Bidders' Brief as part of the original tender and subsequently the contract.

The Government is determined to ensure the £400 billion of public money spent on public procurement annually delivers economic growth, supports small businesses, champions innovation, and creates good jobs and opportunities across the country.

On 13 February the Government published a National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS), which sets out our priorities for public procurement and maximises the impact of every pound spent. New measures to support the transformation of public procurement and to deliver on the Government’s Plan for Small Businesses includes requiring all government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies to set three-year targets for direct spend with SMEs (from 1 April 2025) and VCSEs (from 1 April 2026) and publish progress annually.

On 13 February the Government published a National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS), which sets out our priorities for public procurement and maximises the impact of every pound spent. New measures to support the transformation of public procurement and to deliver on the Government’s Plan for Small Businesses includes requiring all government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies to set three-year targets for direct spend with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 1 April 2025, and Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprises (VCSEs) from 1 April 2026, and publish progress annually.

Under this new policy, departments will be responsible for publishing their own spend with SMEs on an annual basis. Departmental SME Action Plans (published from 1 April 2025) will include SME spend targets approved by departmental Ministers and any previous financial years unpublished SME spend data.

Customers who have used CCS agreements in FY2022/23 were eligible to receive a payment in proportion to the amount of income collected by CCS from suppliers as result of those customers’ transactions.

Activity by customers on 231 frameworks has contributed to the distribution to individual customers, with the lowest value payment threshold being set at £1k, resulting in just under 1,500 customers being eligible to receive a payment. These payments are not part of any written agreement and are non-contractual.

CCS has not made an assessment of the administrative costs that have been, or will be, incurred in operating this scheme.

CCS is considering its opportunities to reduce its levy rates on a case by case basis as new agreements are put in place. Frameworks do not provide a level of committed spend and therefore reducing levy rates across the board would incur an unnecessary degree of risk into CCS’s financial planning. CCS’s levy rates are the lowest of all Public Sector Buying Organisations, at an average of 0.7% across the whole portfolio.

The UK currently recognises EU requirements, including the CE marking, for a range of products. This allows businesses to place goods on our market if they meet these rules, saving them time and money. The Product Safety and Metrology Bill will enable the UK to end recognition of EU product regulations, where it is in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers.

It will also enable the UK to make the sovereign choice to recognise new or updated EU product regulations where appropriate to prevent additional costs for businesses and support economic growth.

There is an error in the data - this expense relates to a premium economy flight from Manchester, UK to Ottawa, Canada to enable Christine Bellamy to represent the UK Civil Service at the AccelerateGOV conference in Canada and attend a series of engagements recommended by the British High Commission. It was not a domestic, business class flight. Premium economy tickets are permitted within policy for flights longer than 5 hours - as was the case here.

Christine Bellamy represented the UK Civil Service as an expert speaker at the AccelerateGOV conference in Ottawa, Canada and while in-country undertook a series of engagements with - and on behalf of - the British High Commission. Meetings included with senior government counterparts from the Canadian Digital Service and Shared Services Canada; with the British Consul General and with a number of Canadian academic institutions and think tanks involved in GovTech, AI and civic society.

The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has provided a report to the Public Accounts Committee on the closure of the 2022-25 Roadmap. The report indicates that 29 of the Top 75 Services have reached the ‘Great’ standard, an increase from 8 ‘Great’ services at baselining.

The Government Digital Service has established a Service Transformation team to drive delivery of the next phase of service transformation work set out in Blueprint for Modern Digital Government, building on the learnings from the Top75 Services Programme.

As set out in the Blueprint, the government will develop a detailed Government Digital & AI Roadmap alongside the second phase of the Spending Review, to be published in summer 2025. This will supersede the 2022-2025 Roadmap, and will include details of how we plan to measure progress through the next phase of digital transformation.

In the 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data, Mission Two states that 'All departments will confirm an adoption strategy and roadmap for One Login by April 2023 and their services will have begun onboarding by 2025.'

In April 2023, 16 of the 17 departments in scope had a delivery plan and were working with GDS to onboard their first services. All departments in scope have now committed to onboarding services to GOV.UK One Login, and are actively implementing delivery plans. 59 services have onboarded to GOV.UK One Login, with an extensive roadmap of new services scheduled to onboard over the course of the next 12 months. They are supported by the GDS Onboarding and Engagement team who provide advice and assets to enable technical service teams to onboard their services smoothly.

The data published on 16 January 2025 reflects the status and delivery stage of the early years and childcare programme, as of 31 March 2024. Since then, central estimates for the financial benefits of extending early years education and childcare entitlements were published in April 2024 by the National Audit Office. These estimates indicate, as of March 2024, a benefit-to-cost ratio of £1.26:£1.00, and a total benefit of £15.972 billion.

The Office for Budget Responsibility also estimated that 60,000 additional parents will enter work, and 1.5 million will increase their working hours by 2027/28 as a result of the policy.

As expected of all Major Projects that form part of the Government Major Projects Portfolio, we will continue to provide regular data to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority on the progress of programme delivery. Now the programme is in live delivery, we will continue to monitor how these estimated benefits develop throughout the programme lifecycle and at the appropriate points provide an update on our position, reflecting the latest delivery data.

Defra in conjunction with the Department for Business and Trade will work to reset the relationship with our European friends to strengthen ties and tackle barriers to trade, while recognising that there will be no return to the single market or customs union.

We will improve the trading relationship through seeking to negotiate a veterinary / Sanitary and Phytosanitary agreement with the European Union to prevent unnecessary border checks and help tackle the cost of food. We will ensure that any agreement we negotiate with our European partners is mutually beneficial, whilst also respecting our international obligations.

Penalty clauses that unduly punish a contract party are unenforceable by the courts and we do not include them in our contracts. We have contract clauses negotiated that operate in good faith that will be breached if not delivered/operated in the required way. Financial recompense will be commensurate to actual loss and agreed in the contract terms. However, we do not collect, hold centrally or report data on the enforcement of such terms.

The attached table shows the cumulative Public Dividend Capital impairment for each of the listed NHS Providers in HL3973, per year, for the past seven financial years.

Please note that as detailed on page 187 of the document, Department of Health and Social Care Annual Report and Accounts 2019-20, Public Dividend Capital impairments have only been recognised on an individual provider basis by the Department since the 2019/20 Annual Report and Accounts, which included a prior period adjustment to apply the same across 2017/18 and 2018/19. Due to the size of the document, a copy has been placed in the Library.

For this reason, the Department has been unable to provide data for the past 10 financial years, although the Department has provided the full information held.

Personalised care adjustments (PCAs) replaced exception reporting in 2019. PCAs operate in the same way as exceptions, but PCA specification follows a consistent hierarchy which supports better attribution of the reason for care being personalised.

The national PCA rate in 2023/24 was 8.2%. 1,253 general practices’ Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) achievement rates fell in the top 20% of achievement rates, and of these, 418, or 33.6%, had PCA rates greater than 8.2%. This information is taken from the published QOF statistics, and is available in an online only format on the NHS.UK website.

The Department set a deadline of 28 June 2024 for the completion of National Health Service provider audits, for the year that ended 31 March 2024. 38 NHS providers did not meet the deadline. NHS providers do not receive revenue allocations, and instead revenue is earned through the provision of services. A table showing the 38 NHS providers and their total operating income is attached.

NHS England has requested retrospective approval of five cases from HM Treasury relating to National Health Service trusts and NHS foundation trusts’ special severance payments in the 2023/24 financial year, all five of which are still pending approval. The retrospective approval process is as set out in HM Treasury’s guidance on managing public money, Guidance on Public Sector Exit Payments: Use of Special Severance Payments.

Public Dividend Capital (PDC) is impaired, on an individual National Health Service provider basis, where the net assets of those NHS providers fall below the level of PDC issued to that trust or foundation trust, irrespective of whether subsequent PDC write-offs are likely to occur. The following table shows the NHS providers that accounted for the largest proportion of the £7.5 billion impairment in 2023/24, along with their respective values:

A change in the accounting treatment for measuring Private Finance Initiative lease liabilities under International Financial Reporting Standards 16 Leases has partly contributed to the increase in the value of the impairments reported in the Department’s 2023/24 accounts.