Taylor: Lack of capacity in centre ‘concerning’ for NHS’ digital plans

The capacity at the centre once NHS England has been abolished and brought into government will arguably become even more insufficient and causes a big concern around digital, NHS Confederation’s chief executive told the Health and Social Care Committee.

Speaking in the House of Commons on 25 March 2025 in a session titled ‘The work of NHS England’, Matthew Taylor said “there is a real issue about digital”.

“This is one of the areas where there seems to be tension between the secretary of state’s vision, from ‘analogue to digital’ is one of his three big shifts, and where the investment has gone in and where the capacity exists,” he told the committee.

“I think of all the issues… one that is arguably the most concerning in terms of the vulnerability of the centre’s capacity is in the digital space.

“The opportunities are enormous, but the capacity at the centre was arguably already insufficient and now arguably will become even more insufficient,” he added.

Taylor also questioned how health secretary Wes Streeting will achieve his analogue to digital shift with the capacity there will now be at the centre to drive that once NHSE has been abolished and brought into the Department of Health and Social Care.

He was joined on the panel by Siva Anandaciva, director of policy, events and partnerships at The King’s Fund, and Nicholas Timmins, senior fellow at Institute for Government.

Anandaciva agreed that achieving digital ambitions in the NHS with a streamlined centre is one of the key issues and stated that the first decision will be deciding “what digital things are you going to do at the national level”.

He also posed the question regarding whether digital leaders would be subject to the same 50% cuts as integrated care boards (ICBs), which have been ordered to cut their running costs in half by December 2025.

Both Taylor and Anandaciva expressed concerns that moving everything to the centre could mean some things are forgotten, such as cyber which currently has a small specific team in place.

“You can move bits of the organisation together but there are certain functions that still have to be done and one of the things you have to watch out for in a reorganisation is that important things just get forgotten in the general shift,” Taylor said.

“Cyber security is a really good example. Cyber security is a massive issue, it’s a small team, a vital team, if people took their eye off the ball for that for six months the consequences could be enormous,” the NHS Confederation chief executive warned.

At Rewired 2025, Denis Lafitte, chief digital information officer at Guys’ and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, called on the government not to scrap the NHS England cyber security team during its top-down reorganisation, describing them as “life saving” for the trust following the Synnovis cyber incident last year.