Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of implementing the recommendations of the briefing paper by Healthwatch Leeds entitled Communicating change, published in September 2024.

While there are no current plans for my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to meet with Healthwatch Leeds, he does meet with stakeholders regularly about a range of issues.

NHS England has carefully considered the points raised in Healthwatch Leeds’ paper, in particular its recommendations for how providers and commissioners should communicate change to people and their communities. In 2022, NHS England published statutory guidance on working with people and communities, which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/working-in-partnership-with-people-and-communities-statutory-guidance/

This guidance supports integrated care boards (ICBs) and providers to meet their legal duties to involve the public in changes to services, and highlights the importance of communicating effectively with communities. NHS England carries out an annual assessment of ICBs, which includes how they meet their public involvement legal duty.