The new budget holding GP commissioning planned by the government is to be investigated by MPs on the recently formed parliamentary health select committee as one of its first inquiries.

The new committee, set up after the general election, is to carry out an inquiry into commissioning and public spending and is inviting written evidence from anyone interested.

One of the last reports by the previous health committee published in March, reviewed the progress of commissioning in the NHS in the past 20 years and concluded it had been a “costly failure”(BMJ 2010;340:c1792, doi:10.1136/bmj.c1792).

Its critical report said, “Weaknesses remain 20 years after the introduction of the purchaser-provider split. …