Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what measures they are putting in place to ensure that unwarranted variation in access to specialised services does not increase due to the delegation of some of these services to the integrated care board level.

NHS England remains the accountable commissioner for all prescribed specialised services, including for those services where commissioning responsibility may be delegated to integrated care boards (ICBs). For any services where commissioning responsibility is delegated to ICBs, NHS England will continue to set national standards, service specifications and clinical access policies which ICBs will be expected to apply. NHS England, alongside ICBs, will continue to seek to understand and address unwarranted variation in access to and outcomes from specialised services, making use of all available data sources.