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 waiting times for women in Somerset who have been referred for a gynaecology appointment.

As of November 2022, the average waiting time for gynaecology treatment across England was 15.4 weeks, a decrease of nearly 14% from the peak average waiting time in July 2020. Per working day activity levels for gynaecology treatment continue to recover and as of November 2022 were 108% of pre-covid levels. While we do not have specific data for Somerset, a huge amount of work is underway nationally to tackle gynaecology wait lists.

The National Health Service has published the ‘Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care’ which outlines how the NHS will bring down waiting times across all elective services including gynaecology and menstrual health. The plan commits to investing in the physical separation of routine care to protect planned services from emergency care pressures where possible. We are increasing capacity for gynaecological surgery to tackle waiting lists through our surgical hub and High Volume Low Complexity programme.

Some gynaecological services, such as menstrual health services, are predominantly provided by general practitioners (GPs) which remained open throughout the pandemic. The Government invested £520 million to improve access and expand GP capacity during the pandemic. This is on top of the £1.5 billion already announced in 2020 to create an additional 50 million GP appointments by 2024 by growing and diversifying the workforce which will help tackle the backlog for gynaecological services.