Clean slate as health board debt written off

● Health secretary announces plans to require boards to break even over 3 years

About £150 million of debt owed by Scotland’s NHS boards will be written off.

Health secretary Jeane Freeman announced the country’s boards would start with a “clean slate” in 2019/20 after a string of loans were paid to struggling authorities.

Boards will have to break even over a three-year period rather than annually under the overhaul.

The Scottish Government is to write off around £150 million of debt owed by NHS boards.

The move announced by health secretary Jeane Freeman is part of a new mediumterm financial framework drawn up by ministers to help deliver health and social care reforms.

Several boards have received loans from the government – known as brokerage – in recent years to fill funding gaps.

Ms Freeman said ministers would not seek to recoup the money given to territorial boards over the past five years, enabling them to start with a “clean slate” from 2019/20.

Under the new framework, boards will be required to break even over a three-year period, rather than annually.

In each year they will also be offered the flexibility to over or under-spend by up to 1 per cent of their budgets.

“In return for their efforts to deliver the reforms for the future, I am facilitating a new three-year financial planning and performance framework for our NHS territorial boards,” Ms Freeman told MSPS.

“For this new deal to be successful, I believe it needs a new start. So to give all our territorial boards clear ground to move forward in that threeyear planning cycle, I will not seek to recover NHS territorial boards’ outstanding brokerage, the expenditure incurred by territorial boards over the last five years, which has been above their budget.

“I want all boards to be able to focus their attention on delivering the measures set out in the health and social care delivery plan and this financial framework, and to do that in a safe and appropriate way.”

Ms Freeman said the new framework makes the “perhaps bold assumption” that Scotland will receive a further £3.3 billion of funding for the health service by 2023/24 as a result of increases in spending south of the Border.

The health secretary told members that extra funds handed to Holyrood as a result of increased health spending at Westminster – Barnett consequentials – would go straight on into the health service.

However, Conservative MSP Miles Briggs said Scottish ministers are “short changing” the NHS “at a time of record UK government health funding”.

He added: “The Cabinet secretary has confirmed the SNP financial mismanagement of our Scottish NHS will result in £150m in NHS board debt being written off. Along with the longest waiting times in history and ever increasing delayed discharge, this is the financial cost of the SNP’S failure to oversee our health boards. The SNP must now stabilise our NHS finances and has significant resources to do this, thanks to record health investment from UK government. It is now vital that this extra funding is used to improve patient care and not swallowed up by bureaucracy and mismanagement.”

The health secretary said spending in Scotland was 7.2 per cent higher than in the UK as a whole.

Labour’s Jenny Marra questioned whether brokerage paid out in this financial year would also be written off.

NHS Tayside has a projected deficit of £18.7m for 2018/19, she said. NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Highland and NHS Borders are also expected to require loans to balance their budgets this year.

Ms Freeman said: “All health boards will start with a clean slate from the year 2019/20.”

“I will not seek to recover NHS territorial boards’ outstanding brokerage, the expenditure incurred by territorial boards over the last five years”

JEANE FREEMAN