Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to increase the accountability of Integrated Care Boards in relation to mental health prevention under the Health Bill.

The Health Bill will strengthen the accountability of integrated care boards (ICBs), including for the delivery of mental health prevention, by increasing my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care’s oversight and intervention powers.

Under the bill, my Rt Hon. Friend will assume NHS England’s responsibilities for overseeing ICBs, holding them to account through the NHS Oversight Framework and an annual assessment against their statutory duties, including duties to improve population health. Where an ICB is failing, or at risk of doing so, my Rt Hon. Friend will be able to intervene.

The NHS Oversight Framework assesses ICBs against a consistent set of national priorities and metrics and includes measures relating to population health outcomes, inequalities, and prevention, as well as service access and delivery. These metrics, alongside wider contextual indicators, inform performance assessment and the response to it, including where additional support or intervention is required. This provides a mechanism to hold ICBs to account for prevention and early intervention, including in mental health.

My Rt Hon. Friend will also take on responsibility for publishing the NHS Standard Contract, which ICBs must use when commissioning services, including mental health services, enabling national requirements to be set for service provision and performance. In addition, the NHS Payment Scheme will continue to set the rules for how services are funded, supporting the delivery of national priorities such as early intervention and prevention.

Alongside these reforms, we are developing a new cross-Government mental health strategy with a strong focus on prevention and early intervention, to be published later this year.