Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the impact of Health and Care Bill proposals to amalgamate Clinical Commissioning Groups into Integrated Care Boards on the geographical boundaries of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

Many local child safeguarding partnerships already work across the different geographical footprints of local authorities, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and police forces. ‘Working together to safeguard children’ sets out the expectations for how partnerships should work across geographical boundaries, including on appropriate delegation where a senior leader is responsible for more than one partnership. All existing child safeguarding responsibilities for CCGs will transfer to the respective integrated care board, which must continue to have regard to the duties on safeguarding partners in ‘Working together to safeguard children’.