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 ensure that women undergoing hysteroscopy tests opting for a general anaesthetic do not experience delay to their procedure.

To transform the way the National Health Service provides care, reduce delays and tackle waiting times including for gynaecology services, the Department has allocated £2.3 billion to open up to 160 Community Diagnostic Centres by 2024/25 and £1.5 billion for new surgical hubs. Surgical hubs focus on providing high volume low complexity surgeries including in gynaecology, as recommended by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Operative Hysteroscopy under general or regional anaesthesia is one of the procedures surgical hubs are able to provide within gynaecology. Currently, there are 89 elective surgical hubs that are operational across England, helping tackle waiting times and improving patient outcomes.