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 of the Health and Care Bill on which body or individual would have responsibility for ensuring any person who needed emergency care would receive it after April 2022.

The Health and Care Bill proposes the establishment of integrated care boards (ICBs) which will take on the commissioning functions and responsibilities of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) as well as some of those held by NHS England. Once statutory ICBs are established, they will be responsible for arranging for the provision of emergency care for everyone for whom they are responsible. Regulations will be made to expand ICB core responsibility to ensure that each ICB is responsible for everyone in its area who needs emergency care, to recreate the duty currently on conferred on CCGs.