Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help (a) ensure conflicts of interest are declared throughout any process that might be likely to result in a commissioning or contracting decision taken by an integrated care board, (b) ensure regular reporting when conflicts of interest have been identified on how they have been managed and of the outcome of (i) contract awards to organisations with a member representative on the board and (ii) other relevant commissioning processes and (c) encourage other measures to promote good governance on integrated care boards.

As contracting authorities, integrated care boards (ICBs) must comply with legal requirements on conflicts of interest. The declaration, reporting and management of conflicts of interest is included in each ICBs governance arrangements.

The Health and Care Act 2022 provides duties on conflicts of interest and that each ICB must set out arrangements for managing such conflicts in its constitution. Additionally, the Act requires each ICB to maintain and publish one or more registers of the interests of board members, the members of its committees or sub-committees and its employees.