To ask the Secretary of State for Health

(1) what transitional arrangements are in place between the end of local involvement networks and the establishment of Healthwatch; and if he will make a statement;

(2) which areas an individual Healthwatch will cover;

(3) which body will have responsibility for patient representation in rural areas; and how any such body will be staffed and resourced.

Local Healthwatch organisations will be set up in each top-tier local authority area from 1 April to help to ensure patients, service users, their families and carers as well as the wider community have the opportunity to have their say, make their views known about local services and to have their interests represented with commissioners and providers of services. Staffing and resources are matters for local decision.

No single organisation is responsible for patient representation in rural areas. Rather, a number of organisations have roles and responsibilities to ensure that patients and the public can have a say in how their local services are run; Healthwatch is one of these alongside, for example, local authorities and clinical commissioning groups.

In terms of transition, we are confident that at least 95% of local authorities will have a local Healthwatch in place on 1 April. In the small number of areas where the Local Government Association has identified concerns, it has been working to provide additional support, helping each of the local authorities to commission services and develop contingency plans to make sure that people who use health and social care services will continue to be represented beyond April.

During the course of 2012-13 the Department has worked with voluntary sector organisations, local government, local involvement networks (LINks), the Care Quality Commission and Healthwatch England to raise awareness of the importance of capturing the LINks' legacy and making good practice available to local Healthwatch organisations going forward.