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 the implications for his policies of the findings of the NHS Staff Survey that ambulance staff have lower morale, higher stress and on all indices, are worse off than other NHS workers.

The National Health Service is working closely with the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives to strengthen leadership and culture and ensure there is a strong package of wellbeing support for staff in the ambulance sector. This includes building on the findings of the recent messenger review of leadership in health and care which identified that good leadership and strong values is key to better patient outcomes.

The Government is supporting the ambulance service and key actions to boost capacity including approximately 7,000 general and acute hospital beds and £500 million to discharge medically fit individuals. These will improve patient flow through hospitals which will support timely handovers, thereby helping to alleviate stress for ambulance staff.

For 2022/23 NHS England are working in collaboration with Ambulance Trusts to develop rehabilitation pathways for staff who have been on long term sickness. Targeted support has been provided for ambulance staff including £8.5 million invested in a pilot of body worn cameras and a further £700k to review restraint and de-escalation training, to develop a central violence prevention hub to improve consistency of approach and support staff nationally.

The Secretary of State met recently with representatives from the Ambulance Sector on 10th January 2023.