Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to track and reduce health inequalities in highly specialised NHS services.

All annual clinical meetings for highly specialised services review health inequalities. NHS England provides advice on how the arrangement of highly specialised services should consider health inequalities, with a focus on access, experience and outcomes. NHS England is developing a framework and resources on how health inequalities can be identified and addressed in the commissioning of highly specialised services, which will be piloted in several services.

NHS England is also collating information on how procurements of healthcare services have addressed healthcare inequalities to provide lessons learned and best practice. An equalities health impact assessment is used when procuring highly specialised services and guidance is available to commissioners on how this assessment should be completed.