Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 11 October 2017 to Question 105277, what the timetable is for the consultation on the new Accountable Care Organisation contract.

NHS England will consult on the draft Accountable Care Organisation contract before any decision is made to issue it as a contract for wider use in the National Health Service.

NHS England has already undertaken wide engagement on this contract, including specific engagement on an early version in December 2016. Responses to the engagement exercise informed further development of an updated version of the draft contract published in August 2017.

It will always be for local commissioners to determine how to best deliver services to meet local needs. It is right that decisions on local services and service models are made by local commissioners, who can best assess how to meet the needs of people in their area. For any significant system reconfiguration, we expect all local parts of the system to be talking to the public and stakeholders regularly — it is vital that people can shape the future of their local services.