The Health White Paper: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS, published in July 2010, is clear there will be a fundamental shift in responsibilities and budgets for commissioning NHS healthcare and services.

NHS London will play an important role, between now and April 2013, in supporting the creation of the Clinical Commissioning Corsortia and the NHS Commissioning board, whilst ensuring performance in Trusts is maintained.

Liberating the NHS

The NHS White Paper, Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS, sets out the Government's long-term vision for the future of the NHS. The vision builds on the core values and principles of the NHS - a comprehensive service, available to all, free at the point of use, based on need, not ability to pay.

• It sets out how we will:
• put patients at the heart of everything the NHS does
• focus on continuously improving those things that really matter to patients empower and liberate clinicians to innovate, with the freedom to focus on improving healthcare services

Clinical Consortia

GPs – working in groups to be known as consortia - will now lead the commissioning of most healthcare services across England. Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities will be abolished and the ambition is for the new clinical consortia to be the statutory bodies accountable for commissioning from April 2013.

The NHS in London is committed to supporting GPs through this journey to become authorised GP consortia by April 2013.

The NHS commissioning board

The NHS Commissioning Board is a major part of the Government's plan to modernise NHS. It will:

• directly commission certain services including: primary medical care, specialised commissioning, offender and some military health;
• promote patient choice; ensure a comprehensive system of Clinical Commissioning Groups, and supporting and holding them to account;
• allocate of, and account for, NHS resources;
• and reduce inequalities in access to healthcare.