Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the potential annual savings of fully integrating health and social care provision.

The Government continues to support the integrated provision of health and social care because of the improvements it brings to the quality of care people receive. Integrated provision has been found to improve health, quality of care and patient satisfaction.

Integration across health and social care commissioning also enables improved co-operation and joint decision-making between health and social care partners in delivering shared outcomes. A number of local areas have reported improved outcomes through the adoption of integrated approaches.

At the national level, evidence of savings due to integrated provision is limited, therefore, the Department does not have an estimate of the annual savings of integration.