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 improve (a) ambulance handover times outside NHS hospitals and (b) A&E waiting times.

A range of measures are in place. The National Health Service has set out a plan to substantially increase capacity and resilience this winter. NHS bed capacity will be increased by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, helping reduce waits for admission from accident and emergency.

On 9 January, the Government announced £200 million to improve patient discharge and free up hospital beds, on top of the £500 million Adult Social Care Discharge Fund announced in December 2022. An additional £50 million in capital funding is being made to expand hospital discharge lounges and ambulance hubs to improve patient flow through hospitals, freeing up space in accident and emergency, and allowing ambulances to swiftly get back on the roads.

The Autumn Statement provides an additional £3.3 billion of NHS funding in both 2023/24 and 2024/25, enabling rapid action to improve urgent and emergency care performance toward pre-pandemic levels. The NHS will set out detailed recovery plans in the coming weeks, including ambitions to improve ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents and deliver year-on-year improvements in accident and emergency waiting times.