Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 27 November 2014 to Question 215754, what consideration the new Task and Finish group will give to the commissioning of kidney services; and when he expects the advisory group to report on what support clinical commissiong groups will require to take on commissioning of dialysis.

NHS England has recently established a Task and Finish group through the NHS Commissioning Assembly. This group comprises representatives from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and NHS England, and will oversee the development and delivery of proposals for commissioning of specialised services in 2015-16 and beyond.

Within this Task and Finish group, a sub-group will be responsible for planning and managing the transition process for services that are being transferred from national to CCG commissioning (including renal dialysis) from 1 April 2015.

On 27 November 2014, the Department has issued a public consultation on the arrangements for the transfer of commissioning responsibility from NHS England to CCGs for renal dialysis and morbid obesity surgery services.

The consultation seeks views on what type of support CCGs will need from NHS England to be able to commission renal dialysis and morbid obesity surgery services effectively and whether, if all this support can be put in place, the timing of the transfer is right.

The results of the consultation will be used to inform the decisions on when and how to transfer the commissioning responsibility for renal dialysis and morbid obesity surgery services to CCGs, and the work of the NHS England Task and Finish group. The consultation will close on 9 January 2015.

NHS England is committed to issuing commissioning guidance for the safe transfer of renal dialysis services from national NHS England responsibility to local CCG responsibility.