Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has for additional winter pressures monitoring commencing in December.

Public Health England publishes a ‘winter health watch’ webpage each week throughout the winter.This includes a summary of the findings of our routine surveillance suitable for a non-technical audience, as well as links through to specific surveillance bulletins including surveillance for all- cause mortality, seasonal influenza, and norovirus.

In addition, data will be collected and published from acute NHS trusts with a major accident and emergency department to provide an indication of where there are winter pressures in the system. This additional winter monitoring will commence on 1 December 2015, and will continue through to the end of February. NHS England will publish the first data on 11 December 2015. The data will be published every Friday over winter with the exception of the Christmas and New Year holidays where the data will be published on an alternative day. It is a routine collection that has been published weekly since 2010.

The routine collection and publication of monthly NHS performance statistics by NHS England will continue as normal during the winter months. NHS England data can be found at:

http://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/winter-daily-sitreps/