Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the criteria are for Ministers to (a) intervene in an Integrated Care Board's reconfiguration proposal and (b) revisit decisions made in those proposals.

The call-in power introduced on 31 January 2024 allows my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to intervene in service reconfigurations within the National Health Service at any stage where a proposal exists and following that intervention, to take or re-take any decision that previously could have been taken by the NHS commissioning body.

The Department published statutory guidance in January 2024 which sets out how call-in requests may be considered. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reconfiguring-nhs-services-ministerial-intervention-powers