Integrated Care Boards: Budgets

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Scriven]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to mandate a statutory minimum ring-fenced allocation within Integrated Care Board budgets for community-based transformation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning health services to meet local need. We do not intend to mandate a statutory minimum ring-fence for community-based transformation. Through the medium-term planning framework and the neighbourhood health framework we are requiring systems to set out how they will shift activity from hospital to community. They need to provide clarity and consistency in order that we scale neighbourhood services and teams and develop locally led neighbourhood health plans.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, that is all well and good, but financial transparency is the bedrock of accountability. Yet in the answer to a recent FoI request, 80% of ICBs indicated that they could not identify their spending on learning disability services. Will the Minister acknowledge that without the basic financial data, the current system provides a perfect screen for ICBs to quietly raid learning disability budgets to cover acute deficits?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises a good point about data. Indeed, one of the pieces of work we are doing with ICBs on how they commission services is requiring better data and data analysis. I hope the noble Lord will see the improvements, but I very much take to heart the point he makes.