Health Services: Women
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of reductions in the budgets for Integrated Care Boards on (a) specialist services for women and (b) Women’s health hubs.
Answered by Karin Smyth
Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the abolition of NHS England, we are clear on the need for a smaller centre, as well as scaling back integrated care board (ICB) running costs and National Health Service provider corporate cost reductions to reduce waste and bureaucracy.
The Spending Review 2025 settlement provides an additional £29 billion of annual day-to-day spending in real terms by 2028/29 compared to 2023/24. We are now carefully reviewing how the settlement is prioritised.
We are supporting ICBs to continue improving their delivery of women’s health hubs, in line with their responsibility to commission services that meet the needs of women in their local populations.
We have heard from ICBs on the positive impacts that women’s health hubs have had on both women's access to care in the community and their experience. The Government is committed to encouraging ICBs to further expand the coverage of women’s health hubs and to support ICBs to use the learning from the women’s health hub pilots to improve local delivery of services to women and girls.
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