Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the (a) membership, (b) scope and function, and (c) meeting schedule is of the joint NHS England and integrated care board working group overseeing the commissioning of gambling harms treatment services from April 2027.

NHS England is in the process of establishing new governance structures for the Gambling Harms Treatment Programme to ensure effective oversight, via a Regional Commissioning Leads Forum. Terms of Reference for this group are currently being finalised, but its aim will be to bring together NHS gambling harms commissioning leads from across the country to consider issues such as funding allocations and procurement decisions.

Due to the commercial nature of many of these discussions, this Forum will not be open to outside participants and minutes will not be routinely published. However, NHS England does plan to engage with external stakeholders in other ways, including through a new Lived Experience Forum to be established in early 2027, meetings with voluntary, community and social enterprise treatment providers in receipt of levy funding, and focussed engagement sessions on specific programme outputs.