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 potential effect on healthcare provision of NHS reconfiguration through the creation of Integrated Care Systems during a period of high level demand for primary and secondary care.

Integrated care systems in their non-statutory form are already in existence and helping system working. Placing them on a statutory basis will remove barriers to joined up approaches and support recovery from the pandemic.   The reforms were originally proposed by NHS England and have been further developed with system partners, including the Local Government Association. They will be implemented in a manner designed to ensure the minimum amount of disruption. A full impact assessment will be published in due course.