Policy paper

Health Bill: summary - fact sheet

Published 19 May 2026

Applies to England

Introduction

This document provides the context behind the upcoming Health Bill (‘the bill’) including a summary of the main objectives and specific measures, and how they align with the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) wider agenda.

Background

Lord Darzi’s independent investigation of the NHS in England found the NHS in a critical condition, considering it a system too rigid and complex, over-centralised and with unclear accountability, using fragmented and outdated information systems resulting in poor patient care and experience.

The 10 Year Health Plan for England sets out our vision to deliver high-quality healthcare for the public, through an NHS that harnesses innovation through digital technologies, unlocks the value of health data, empowers patients and clinicians, embeds patient voice in decision-making, and gives greater power to local leaders, supported by a streamlined and accountable national restructured DHSC.

The bill is integral to our investment and modernisation agenda to improve patient care. It will primarily do 2 things:

• improve patient safety and experience through a new single patient record (SPR), enabling joined-up, proactive care and empowering patients
• put power and resources in the hands of frontline NHS organisations by abolishing NHS England and stripping back national bureaucracy

These are necessary steps to reduce inefficiency, drive innovation and support early intervention to help people stay well for longer. This will help put the NHS back on its feet so it is:

• there for patients when they need it
• a better place for staff to work
• better value for taxpayers

Objectives of the bill

The measures in the bill are underpinned by the core belief that a more democratic NHS is a more efficient and effective NHS, and clear democratic accountability is critical to ensuring services are driven by patient experience and population outcomes. The bill will support plans to modernise the NHS by shifting power out into the system, redesigning the national centre so that it adds real value and by ensuring, through the SPR, that information follows the patient to where and when they need it most.

We are not creating new organisational forms, new layers of oversight or new provisions on the statute book where they are not needed. Instead, we are futureproofing the statutory framework, avoiding a proliferation of unnecessary detail in legislation and seeking legislative change only where strictly needed - the core functions of NHS trusts, foundation trusts and integrated care boards (ICBs) will continue in their current form.

Building the SPR to improve safety and experience

Too often, patients experience care which is not joined up, having to tell their story time and time again when they meet a new clinician. This is not just an inconvenience, it puts patient safety at risk. When clinicians do not have all the relevant facts available, they cannot make the best decisions and patients lose out.

A lack of joined up care records also means that there are missed opportunities to diagnose and treat people early. Too many patients are left seeking urgent care once their health has deteriorated, but we should be able to spot problems and intervene early. This is better for patients’ health and better value for money. But this is not possible without joined up information and a single version of the truth. The lack of a single, accurate source of information, accessible by patients themselves, is causing harm.

We are determined to give people more control over their lives. This means a health and care system that revolves around patients, rather than patients revolving around them. This bill will provide the framework that will enable patients’ health and social care records to be brough together in one place. At long last there will be a single version of the truth which will:

• enable patients to see their own health record, securely on the NHS App, empowering them to take informed decisions about their own health and improve their experiences of care
• mean clinicians will no longer rely on patients having to repeat their story to provide care
• help providers to deliver better care and commissioners who want to understand where to best allocate resources

It is intended that the SPR will be made available to clinicians as early as mid-2027 for some specialties. Our ambition is that from 2028, all patients in England will have access to a core set of their data through the SPR, viewable securely through the NHS app.

Abolishing NHS England to invest in the frontline and declutter the health system

Local leaders have complained of ‘2 centres’, creating confusion and inertia, and most importantly diluting democratic accountability for the NHS. The public rightly expects to hold politicians to account directly for the quality of the services they are paying for. However, accountability has been lost in layers of bureaucracy. The NHS has become a jumble of arm’s length bodies with unclear and overlapping roles that has generated confusing and conflicting instructions that can overwhelm local leaders and distract them from making real progress for the public.

The bill addresses this by abolishing NHS England, simplifying the health body landscape, and creating a leaner and more agile centre, with patient voice embedded at its heart.

This will include provisions to:

• abolish NHS England and create a lean, agile centre. Transferring NHS England’s functions into DHSC or the wider system will reduce bureaucracy and free up resources to be reinvested in the frontline, which will restore democratic ministerial accountability for national decision-making
• strengthen local democratic accountability in health systems by placing new requirements for a member nominated from each mayor of a mayoral strategic authority covered in the ICB’s area
• reinvigorate the role of health and wellbeing boards which will play a key role in developing neighbourhood health plans
• strengthen the patient safety landscape and ensure better outcomes for patients and staff by transferring the Health Services Safety and Investigations Body (HSSIB) functions to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to ensure learning generates action. We will also help bring victims confidence that we have learnt from their experiences by extending the time limit for CQC to bring legal action against a provider
• embed patient voice in the heart of national decision-making by transferring the functions of Healthwatch England to DHSC, and developing a new patient experience directorate in the department to make the public’s voice more directly relevant to the formulation of policy

Empowering ICBs and foundation trusts to deliver for patients

Putting patients at the heart of care means devolving decisions to a local level, to those who truly understand the needs of their communities and are trusted to shape and integrate services more effectively. Local leaders and organisations must feel empowered to look out to their populations rather than up to regional or national offices.

This bill will clarify the role of local health bodies, giving them a real flexibility to design and deliver health services to best meet the needs of their populations.

This will include provisions to:

• support ICBs as strategic commissioners by transferring responsibility for all but the most specialised commissioning functions to ICBs, including primary care, dentistry, ophthalmology and pharmacy
• give ICBs the flexibility in how to manage their local systems by removing the requirement for certain members on their boards and adjusting any remaining requirements to suit their revised role. The bill will also streamline the planning process to ensure there are ICB plans at neighbourhood and strategic level, eliminating the requirement on a local area to have an integrated care partnership, allowing for greater flexibility
• empower providers through foundation trust reform, giving them more flexibility to design and deliver healthcare around local needs by removing the requirement for a council of governors. The best performers will be rewarded with new freedoms and where local services consistently underperform ministers will have the power to convert NHS foundation trusts to NHS trusts as a last resort
• ensure the voices of patients, service users and local people feeds directly into the services they receive, by transferring the functions of local Healthwatch to where local decisions are made. The functions relating to healthcare will transfer into ICBs, while the functions relating to social care move to local authorities

The wider health agenda

This bill is only one part of our wider modernisation agenda because passing laws alone does not deliver change. Alongside the bill we are:

• shifting care from the hospital to community, through the development of neighbourhood health services which organise services around people and the creation of integrated health organisations (IHOs), which will eventually have control over the whole health budget for their local areas
• moving from analogue to digital, to free up clinical time through adoption of tried and tested technology such as ambient voice (converting speech to text) and improving patient experiences through the world leading NHS App to access and plan care
• moving from sickness to prevention, by:
  • phasing out sales of tobacco to the next generation
  • restricting junk food advertising at children and banning the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children to end the obesity epidemic
  • expanding mental health support teams and in schools and colleges

This work, supported by legislative change, will allow us to deliver the full scope of our ambitious agenda, taking the NHS from the worst crisis in its history and renewing it so it serves generations to come.