§ Mr. MaplesTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement regarding the proposed powers of his Department over GPs who do not wish to relinquish control of their practice budgets, under the measures set out in his White Paper on the NHS. [29060]
§ Mr. MilburnSubject to legislation, the general practitioner fundholding scheme will be wound up and replaced by a system of Primary Care Groups and Primary Care Trusts who will be accountable to health authorities for the way in which they discharge their functions within the locally agreed Health Improvement Programme. Groups rather than individual practices will reach service agreements with National Health Service trusts. Over time, we expect that groups will extend indicative budgets to individual practices for the full range of services, but no individual element will be artificially capped.
It will be open to the group to agree practice level incentive arrangements associated with those budgets, with the approval of the health authority, where this helps promote best use of resources. Initially, every practice will have a prescribing budget, as most do now.