NHS Supply Chain has worked closely with the Department to support the implementation of its value based procurement (VBP) guidance. Within the Total Cardiology and Vascular Solutions Framework, the Department’s methodology has been piloted on a national procurement and integrated into the non-financial evaluation criteria, with appropriate adaptations made to reflect the specific clinical and operational requirements of the specialty. Value-based assessment criteria and associated non-financial questions have been included where supplier claims can be objectively assessed ensuring a fair, transparent, and equitable evaluation process.

Extensive pre-market engagement was undertaken between March 2025 and September 2025, providing suppliers, customers, clinical associations, and professional bodies with the opportunity to share insights, feedback, and observations on the proposed procurement strategy and overall approach. Communication has been conducted in forms such as team meetings, face to face meetings, and email exchanges with all stakeholders, including clinicians. Draft versions of the VBP questions were circulated during this period to support supplier readiness and to enable meaningful challenge and feedback in advance of tender publication. NHS Supply Chain clinical and category teams engaged extensively with key clinical stakeholder groups, including members of the British Heart Rhythm Society, members of the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society, and NHS England Device Working Groups, to inform the development and refinement of the VBP criteria. The final questions focus on areas where value can be clearly evidenced, including clinical outcomes, innovation, sustainability, social value, and whole-system costs and efficiencies.

While the NHS Supply Chain has successfully incorporated VBP principles into the cardiology and vascular framework evaluation, a key challenge remains the limited availability of standardised Patient Reported Outcome Measures, clinical registries, and other robust outcome datasets to enable consistent and comparable assessment of supplier value claims. Consequently, VBP evaluation has been focused on evidence that can be objectively assessed at the tender stage, with a clear commitment to further validate and measure value throughout the lifetime of the framework as more comprehensive clinical, operational, and patient outcome data becomes available. This approach balances fairness and transparency in procurement with the longer-term ambition of embedding a mature, evidence-based value assessment model across the specialty.

NHS Supply Chain has worked closely with the Department to support the implementation of its value based procurement (VBP) guidance. Within the Total Cardiology and Vascular Solutions Framework, the Department’s methodology has been piloted on a national procurement and integrated into the non-financial evaluation criteria, with appropriate adaptations made to reflect the specific clinical and operational requirements of the specialty. Value-based assessment criteria and associated non-financial questions have been included where supplier claims can be objectively assessed ensuring a fair, transparent, and equitable evaluation process.

Extensive pre-market engagement was undertaken between March 2025 and September 2025, providing suppliers, customers, clinical associations, and professional bodies with the opportunity to share insights, feedback, and observations on the proposed procurement strategy and overall approach. Communication has been conducted in forms such as team meetings, face to face meetings, and email exchanges with all stakeholders, including clinicians. Draft versions of the VBP questions were circulated during this period to support supplier readiness and to enable meaningful challenge and feedback in advance of tender publication. NHS Supply Chain clinical and category teams engaged extensively with key clinical stakeholder groups, including members of the British Heart Rhythm Society, members of the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society, and NHS England Device Working Groups, to inform the development and refinement of the VBP criteria. The final questions focus on areas where value can be clearly evidenced, including clinical outcomes, innovation, sustainability, social value, and whole-system costs and efficiencies.

While the NHS Supply Chain has successfully incorporated VBP principles into the cardiology and vascular framework evaluation, a key challenge remains the limited availability of standardised Patient Reported Outcome Measures, clinical registries, and other robust outcome datasets to enable consistent and comparable assessment of supplier value claims. Consequently, VBP evaluation has been focused on evidence that can be objectively assessed at the tender stage, with a clear commitment to further validate and measure value throughout the lifetime of the framework as more comprehensive clinical, operational, and patient outcome data becomes available. This approach balances fairness and transparency in procurement with the longer-term ambition of embedding a mature, evidence-based value assessment model across the specialty.

We recognise the importance of tackling blood clots in pregnancy, also referred to as venous thromboembolism (VTE), as the leading cause of maternal death in England. The rate of maternal deaths from thrombosis and thromboembolism rose substantially between 2009 to 2011 and 2021 to 2023, from 1.26 to 2.13 per 100,000, in maternity, with rising rates of maternal obesity, advanced maternal age, and births by caesarean section likely contributing factors.

VTE is thought to occur in approximately one of 500 pregnancies, and the approach to minimising risk has therefore focused on universal risk assessment, targeted information, and preventative treatment for those considered to be at high risk. Last year, Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK identified the need for improved VTE risk assessment, better pathways for rapid access to thromboprophylaxis in early pregnancy, and more robust training for clinicians.

NHS England published the Maternal Care Bundle in January 2026, with the aim to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity and reduce inequalities in these adverse outcomes. Element 1 requires the National Health Service to implement a new, simplified, national self-assessment questionnaire on VTE risk, for all women at their first NHS care contact with a positive pregnancy test, and ensure that those considered at highest risk have a discussion with a prescriber, and are offered low molecular weight heparin within 72 hours. Services have been asked through Element 1 of the Maternal Care Bundle to adopt Thrombosis UK’s early pregnancy blood clot risk questionnaire, which has information on the risk of VTE in pregnancy. All NHS trusts providing maternity services are responsible for fully implementing the Maternal Care Bundle by March 2027. This includes providing regular reports to the trust board on implementation.

All midwives are trained to discuss VTE symptoms with all women at the first contact in pregnancy and through to postnatal contacts, as part of the standard assessment process. Clinical guidance that directs their training includes the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s postnatal care guidance, reference code NG194, and Venous thromboembolism in over 16s: reducing the risk of hospital-acquired deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, reference code NG89.

Baroness Amos’ final report of her independent National Investigation into Maternity and Neonatal Services in England has recommended that the NHS commissions and delivers ‘antenatal education that reflects the realities of pregnancy and birth today’. The Government will work with the national Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce on the response to this recommendation, including on information women require regarding the risk of VTE.

Locally, some individual trusts also produce additional information for women and their families about reducing the risk of blood clots and VTE in pregnancy.

Until such time as the Health Bill receives Royal Assent, the statutory requirements for councils of governors (CoGs) remain. All National Health Service foundation trusts (FTs) will be expected to have put in place effective arrangements for community engagement by the time the bill provisions to remove CoGs have commenced.

To ensure the effectiveness of these arrangements, they will be tested as part of ongoing assurance processes, including provider capability assessments, Care Quality Commission well-led assessments, and the assessment process for advanced foundation trust status.

If arrangements are found to be ineffective, there are a range of escalation approaches available. The appropriate intervention would depend on the circumstances and whether there were wider failures at the FT, but it could involve finding the trust in breach of the conditions of its provider licence and requiring the FT to develop and deliver a plan to address the issue.

The Department has published impact assessments for the Health Bill, which include an assessment of reform to the foundation trust model. This is available at the following link:

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-02/0009/ia_Structural_measures_to_ICBs.pdf

What steps he is taking to improve access to digital infrastructure for NHS trusts.

I put it on the record that my hon. Friend has been a most determined advocate for patients and staff at the North West Anglia NHS foundation trust, who clearly deserve better IT systems. We have agreed plans to replace the trust’s electronic patient record system and supporting infrastructure. We will go on to provide practical support and guidance, including help with costs, and we will pair the trust with other NHS organisations that have overcome similar issues in the past.

It is welcome that the Government are making progress on digital infrastructure and the single patient record, which is good news for patients and for the NHS, but patients in Peterborough risk missing out on some of the benefits because of the poor state of the local hospital and the North West Anglia NHS foundation trust’s IT. I thank the Secretary of State and those on the Front Bench for engaging with me on this issue previously, but what reassurance can he give that the Department will work with the NWAFT to ensure that we have the infrastructure we need in Peterborough, so that patients in my constituency benefit the most?

The hon. Lady makes a very compelling case for the investment that we are putting in to transform digital infrastructure in the NHS, because the single patient record—introduced through the Health Bill that is currently going through Parliament—will enable systems across the NHS to be linked up so that people will no longer have to repeat their stories time and again to different clinicians or people from whom they seek care. It also means that people will have their health records linked up when clinicians decide how to treat them. It is a win-win for patients and for clinicians when they are looking at the opportunities that the new technology provides.

I spent a day last week with the palliative care team at William Harvey hospital in Ashford, which serves a large chunk of my constituency, and I was amazed by how much time they spent gathering and sharing information. They were clicking through on really old systems, all on pdf, which takes up a huge amount of time that they could instead be spending on clinical care, especially given how technology is evolving. When are we going to get past the situation in which every single time a doctor sees a patient, it is like the whole interaction with the NHS is happening for the very first time?

This Government will invest up to £10 billion in NHS technology and transformation by 2028-29. That includes ambient voice technology, which supports doctors to write up notes more quickly so that they can focus on patient care, and the single patient record, which will bring a patient’s health data into one secure system, limiting repetition across services. We will use technologies like these to free up staff time, so that they can spend more time on care and less on administration.

In October 2025, NHS England set out the expectation, through the Medium Term Planning Framework, for trusts to implement the National Bereavement Care Pathway for stillbirth and neonatal death. In practice, some of these standards will also be applicable in the context of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and molar pregnancy, offering support for these women and families.

While miscarriage and other types of pregnancy loss were not explicitly covered in Baroness Amos’ final report into National Health Service maternity and neonatal care, she did make a recommendation around fundamentally reforming care, including through the development of a new modern service framework. The taskforce will consider all stages of maternity and neonatal care when developing its new national action plan, and we anticipate that the taskforce may wish to include pregnancy loss.

We are also working closely with NHS England to improve the availability of Early Pregnancy Assessment Units, and have extended the Baby Loss Certificate scheme, which provides recognition of pre-24-week loss.

As part of its 10-Year Health Plan, the Government is committed to a digital-first National Health Service that delivers for patients.

The NHS App is the primary digital channel providing patients with a range of NHS services on their smartphone or tablet whilst NHS Notify is the centralised, digital-first messaging service that is being adopted across the NHS. This enables trusts and providers in England to communicate with patients and the public using both digital and non-digital formats, as appropriate.

The 10-Year Health Plan introduces a new operating model to incentivise adoption of digital services including earned autonomy, a failure regime for persistent underperformance, published provider league tables, and an expectation that all hospitals will be "fully AI-enabled" within the plan's lifetime.

In June, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced the implementation of Martha’s Rule in all antenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal inpatient maternity and neonatal settings in England, building on 15 successful pilot sites.

This is to ensure that every parent can request a rapid review from an independent medical team if a baby or mother’s condition is deteriorating and they are concerned this is not being responded to.

NHS England is supporting the implementation of Matha’s rule, including in maternity services.

In June, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced the implementation of Martha’s Rule in all antenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal inpatient maternity and neonatal settings in England, building on 15 successful pilot sites.

This is to ensure that every parent can request a rapid review from an independent medical team if a baby or mother’s condition is deteriorating and they are concerned this is not being responded to.

NHS England is supporting the implementation of Matha’s rule, including in maternity services.

The Department published the Value Based Procurement (VBP) Standard Guidance on 11 June 2026, in line with commitments in the 10-Year Health Plan for England and Life Sciences Sector Plan. The Department will be undertaking an engagement programme with National Health Service procurement teams to spread awareness of the guidance and encourage uptake. The Department will also convene a VBP Champions Network to promote uptake of the guidance within NHS organisations and will launch expressions of interest to join the network this summer.

Also, in line with commitments in the Life Sciences Sector Plan, the Department will monitor usage of the guidance with feedback from procurement teams and suppliers to inform any refinements or iterations over time. Finally, NHS England and the Department will be launching a training offer to upskill procurement teams on the VBP methodology, including encouraging early clinician involvement within procurement processes as outlined in the guidance.

We expect National Health Service organisations to follow the law and implement the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v. The Scottish Ministers, and to take specialist legal advice where necessary.

The Supreme Court ruling made clear in law that single-sex spaces based on biological sex must be protected and my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has been clear that he expects all NHS providers to follow the law.

Now the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Code of Practice for services, public functions, and associations has been laid in Parliament, NHS England is developing guidance, for instance regarding the provision and use of physical NHS staff facilities, which will be published in due course. This will advise employers on the approach they must take to ensure that their relevant policies are up to date and legally compliant.

We expect National Health Service organisations to follow the law and implement the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v. The Scottish Ministers, and to take specialist legal advice where necessary.

The Supreme Court ruling made clear in law that single-sex spaces based on biological sex must be protected and my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has been clear that he expects all NHS providers to follow the law.

Now the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Code of Practice for services, public functions, and associations has been laid in Parliament, NHS England is developing guidance, for instance regarding the provision and use of physical NHS staff facilities, which will be published in due course. This will advise employers on the approach they must take to ensure that their relevant policies are up to date and legally compliant.