Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS England employees there (a) are and (b) were on 13 March 2025; and what estimate he has made of the number of NHS England employees there will be following the first round of the voluntary redundancy scheme.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS England employees have resigned, transferred or otherwise terminated their employment at NHS England since the announcement of its abolition.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.
Asked by: Jayne Kirkham (Labour (Co-op) - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help ensure that all surgeons, including private surgeons, record the implants they have done in the Breast Implant Registry.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.
Asked by: Claire Young (Liberal Democrat - Thornbury and Yate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NHS bodies are permitted to award contracts in which the contractor's remuneration is linked to reductions in patient care expenditure.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS England employees have opted to take the voluntary redundancy scheme commencing in April 2026.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.
Asked by: Josh Fenton-Glynn (Labour - Calder Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients were registered at each (a) main practice and (b) branch surgery in Calder Valley constituency in (i) July 2025 and (ii) March 2026.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the number of registered patients at each practice in the Calder Valley constituency on 1 July 2025, and on 1 February 2026, as this is the most recent available data:
Practice code | Practice name | Registered patients, 1 February 2026 | Registered patients, 1 July 2025 |
B84003 | Rydings Hall Surgery | 7,727 | 7,789 |
B84004 | Hebden Bridge Group Practice | 18,577 | 18,592 |
B84006 | Todmorden Group Practice | 16,041 | 16,146 |
B84007 | Brig Royd Surgery | 10,600 | 10,655 |
B84008 | The Northolme Practice | 16,442 | 16,309 |
B84009 | Stainland Road Medical Centre | 11,540 | 11,493 |
B84011 | Church Lane Surgery | 10,984 | 11,032 |
B84014 | Rastrick Health Centre | 5,563 | 5,421 |
B84016 | Bankfield Surgery | 11,356 | 11,394 |
B84623 | Longroyde Surgery | 5,126 | 5,038 |
In addition, the following table shows which practices are branches of main practices within the Calder Valley constituency, excluding COVID vaccination service branches:
Branch code | Branch name | Main practice name |
B84004002 | The Health Centre | Hebden Bridge Group Practice |
B84004003 | Grange Dene Medical Centre | Hebden Bridge Group Practice |
B84016001 | Bankfield Surgery at Rosemount House | Bankfield Surgery |
As patients are registered to main practices, there is no data for the number of patients registered to branch practices.
Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many GP practices have closed in the last 12 months; and and GPs have (a) resigned and (b) retired in the same period of time.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Data on GP practices, including closure dates, is published as part of the ‘GP and GP practice related data’ set, available at the following link:
Data on GP workforce can be found here:
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the average ambulance waiting times for (a) Category 1, (b) Category 2, (c) Category 3 and (d) Category 4 incidents for each region of the UK.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes monthly data on ambulance response times for England as part of the Ambulance Quality Indicators publication. The publication can be found at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/
The following table shows latest published performance data for ambulance response times in England, broken down by ambulance category:
Ambulance category | Performance standard | Latest published performance (January 2026) |
C1 average | 7 minutes | 8:08 |
C1 90th centile | 15 minutes | 14:27 |
C2 average | 18 minutes | 35:04 |
C2 90th centile | 40 minutes | 1:13:53 |
C3 90th centile | 2 hours | 5:02:09 |
C4 90th centile | 3 hours | 6:37:43 |
Ambulance response times for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are published by their own health services respectively and can be found online. The response time categories and thresholds differ from those used in England, and as such direct comparisons cannot be made. The separate publications for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are available, respectively, at the following three links:
https://www.scottishambulance.com/our-board/board-papers/
https://jcc.nhs.wales/insighthub/asi/
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/articles/emergency-care-and-ambulance-statistics
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the number of ambulance response cases in Category 3 and Category 4 incidents that involved patients waiting over 5 hours for an ambulance for each region of the UK.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes monthly data on ambulance response times for England as part of the Ambulance Quality Indicators publication. The publication can be found at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/
NHS England does not publish performance response time data that allows for an assessment of the number of patients who wait over five hours. It does publish the 90th centile performance, the threshold that the 10% of incidents with the highest response time are greater than.
Ambulance response times for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are published by their own health services respectively and can be found online. The response time categories and thresholds differ from those used in England, and as such direct comparisons cannot be made. The separate publications for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are available, respectively, at the following three links:
https://www.scottishambulance.com/our-board/board-papers/
https://jcc.nhs.wales/insighthub/asi/
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/articles/emergency-care-and-ambulance-statistics
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the number of year-on-year changes to hospital handover delays in (a) Shropshire (b) West Midlands and (c) England.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Shropshire is primarily served by the West Midlands Ambulance Service, along with the wider West Midlands region, where in January 2026 average hospital handovers took one hour, 20 minutes and 15 seconds, which is worse than the same period the year before.
For England overall, the most recent National Health Service performance figures show that average ambulance handover delays have improved, falling to 37 minutes 39 seconds from 40 minutes 23 seconds, an improvement of over two and a half minutes from the same period last year.
From 2023, NHS England has published data on hospital handover delays at acute and ambulance trust level. There is no published data on individual hospital handover times publicly available, so the Deptartment is unable to list the longest hospital handover times recorded. However, the 90th centile of handovers times are published monthly. The data can be found at the following two links: