Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of military hospital provision.

Armed Forces personnel in the UK routinely receive secondary care, including specialist hospital treatment, through the NHS, working with the Defence Medical Services (DMS) to ensure that specific defence requirements are met.

The Royal Centre for Defence Medicine is the UK's primary military medical facility. Based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, military medical personnel are integrated with NHS staff to provide specialist treatment for injured military personnel, including those evacuated from overseas. It further serves as a centre for training and research.

Additionally, there are over 1000 military Doctors, Nurses and Allied Health Professionals permanently based in 56 NHS trusts across the UK, ensuring military medics maintain the skills they require to support military operations across the globe and providing essential support to our NHS. Through this partnership, Defence is supporting the government’s mission to build an NHS fit for the future with military healthcare professionals routinely treating members of the general public, however, for security reasons they are not always identifiable as being serving members of the Armed Forces.

DMS is working closely with NHS England and health services in the Devolved Administrations to ensure non-deployable personnel awaiting NHS treatment are returned to fighting fitness. Further, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) is working with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to meet the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) recommendations including rebuilding capacity and capability, in partnership with the NHS, to meet the demands of warfighting.