Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce NHS waiting lists in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.

The department has made available £2 billion this year through the Elective Recovery Fund in which systems across England can draw upon to help recover elective services. In addition, across 2022 to 2025, a commitment of £8 billion has been made to reduce waiting lists and transform elective services. This additional funding will support the National Health Service to deliver millions of extra checks, scans and procedures, and to invest in their infrastructure to meet patient demand.

£10 million has been provided to support the restoration of patient services across Coventry and Warwickshire Clinical Commissioning Group as part of a national Elective Accelerator programme. The Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Systems have also received an additional £4.2 million of capital funding and £4.8 million of revenue funding through the Targeted Investment Fund, to support them to step up their elective activity.

Across the Midlands, NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Elective care team continue to work to support all systems within the Midlands in delivering their elective recovery plans. It includes providing specific support to high volume specialties via pathway improvement initiative and best practice programmes such as the Getting it Right First-Time programme.