Speeches by Dixon.

“My colleague Nesil wants to come in on this. I might briefly come back, because of the evidence we have received about some of the more vulnerable groups of women, in terms of how we prevent for them.”

“I just want to draw attention to the Runnymede Trust evidence we received, which highlights that women and girls of colour are more vulnerable, as are women who are disabled, homeless, refugees and migrants. I would like to put on record my thanks and commendation to Bradford Rape Crisis, who have had a specialist serv…”

“We have spoken about vaccines and how you can predict better. What are the plans for how you are going to estimate future PPE stockpiles to help for resilience against future pandemics?”

“Being conscious of time, I will try to keep questions short and encourage you to be short in your replies. I just want to come on to a couple of issues in the accounts about unapproved payments. There has been a historical issue of ineligible medical practitioners receiving payments. Julian Kelly, what progress have yo…”

“Thank you, Sir Chris and Julian, for your honest responses to the Chair’s questions. Given this is a hearing about the accounts, I want to try to probe the financial implications of what you have both spoken about. Perhaps, Julian, you could help with this. In figure 1 on page 5 of the accounts, there are four blue box…”

“That is helpful. As you are explaining, the idea is that there is more flowing down in those arrows towards NHS providers. I was going to ask about ICBs. Again in round numbers, it appears from this set of accounts that there was some £30 billion that seemed to go from the money coming into ICBs, which was taken in som…”

“You mentioned earlier the abbreviation CVU, or covid vaccine unit, which has been responsible for the procurement and distribution of our supply of covid-19 vaccinations. Can you just tell the Committee what the future of that unit is and whether it is remaining within the UKHSA?”

“That is a bit of a mouthful.”

““CVU” was a little easier to get your mouth around. The unit, and now this new organisation, holds contracts for vaccines that we do not expect to use. I understand that these are non-cancellable contracts. How much money is locked into these contracts that we cannot get out of, and how does that relate to the partners…”

“So it was error rather than fraud.”

“So they are not all out of date and wasted.”

“How are your new team going to make sure that they get value for money in the way that they are going to be procuring, entering into contracts, and predicting the volumes, so that you do not end up with the sort of situation that we have here of £1 billion of vaccine underused, let us say, rather than unused?”

“And avoiding this situation in the future as well.”

“This may not be for you, Dame Jenny, but perhaps for Sir Chris. As we are on covid, in terms of PPE, here in the accounts, it lays bare what I would say in this case is a waste of taxpayers’ money. You may argue as well that some of that was unpredictable at the time, but there are £10 billion of what are called here i…”

“In your own risk assessment, you have said that respiratory is the most likely. Are you making provision for domestic supply in future of specific types of PPE, recognising that it could be any of the mechanisms of transmission?”

“Okay, and you are confident that the new process will work.”

“What is the total amount that has been spent across the NHS on not just special severance payments but severance payments in general?”

“I just wanted to get a sense of whether, over time, the use of this is going up or going down. There can be a reason for that. I also want to come to another related point. I realise that you would not wish to comment at all on an individual case, but the chair of a local trust was removed after raising some serious sa…”

“There is not currently a publicly available breakdown of the legal costs as they relate to exit packages and employment tribunals or such things. It would be useful for this Committee if you could follow up and provide us with that, based on the consolidated NHS Providers accounts, so that we can track. In terms of whe…”

“Another aspect of people and money is special severance payments. Again, the protocol is that these should all get Treasury approval. It seems, again, that NHS providers made some 51 special severance payments, totalling over £900,000, in 2023-24. Five were not approved. Can you just update us on progress on addressing…”