Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether clinical commissioning group areas that are subject to the capped expenditure process will continue to be so subject in the event that are merged with another clinical commissioning group.

The Capped Expenditure Process was run as an extension to the 2017/18 planning process aimed at those places that were otherwise unable to live within their means. It was therefore limited to the 2017/18 financial year and so is now in effect concluded. For the 2018/19 planning process it is still essential that all clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) do their utmost to submit a plan to live within their means, and to repay any cumulative historical overspends. Where CCGs are merging as of 1 April 2018 the same rules will apply to the merged entity as applied to the individual entities prior to the merger.