107/01 9 October 2001

A conference to review the major trends that will affect the health service in the long term is to be held in association with University College, London on 18-19 October at the Barbican Centre, the Treasury announced today.

A number of leading academics and other health experts will present papers to an invited audience representing a range of health care stakeholders. The aim is to help inform the review of long-term health trends currently being undertaken for the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, by Derek Wanless. It is intended that the proceedings of the conference will be published later in the year.

The conference will consider a range of areas, including demographic trends, quality and public expectations, information technology, medical advances and employment trends.

1. Budget 2001 announced that Derek Wanless, former Group Chief Executive of Nat West Bank, would undertake a review of the technological, demographic and medical trends over the next two decades that will affect the health service. The Review will report to the Chancellor in time for the next Spending Review in 2002. A copy of the terms of reference of the health trends review is attached.

1. To examine the technological, demographic and medical trends over the next two decades that may affect the health service in the UK as a whole.
2. In the light of (1), to identify the key factors which will determine the financial and other resources required to ensure that the NHS can provide a publicly funded, comprehensive, high quality service available on the basis of clinical need and not ability to pay.
3. To report to the Chancellor by April 2002, to allow him to consider the possible implications of this analysis for the Government’s wider fiscal and economic strategies in the medium term; and to inform decisions in the next public spending review in 2002.