Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of ambulance delays in December 2022 on mortality rates for (a) heart attack and (b) stroke patients.

No specific assessment has been made. The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities updated their Excess Mortality report on 12 January 2023. This provides data to 30 December 2022 and includes information on the causes of death which contributed to excess deaths last month.

We recognise response times are an important factor for the outcomes of a range of conditions, and there are a number of significant measures in place to improve ambulance performance. The National Health Service winter resilience plan will increase NHS bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, alongside significant investment to improve patient discharge from hospital, with an additional £200 million made available on top of the £500 million already invested last year. These measures help improve patient flow through hospital, reducing ambulance handover delays and enabling swifter responses to incoming 999 calls.

The Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services was published on 30 January and sets out plans to bring down Category 2 response times to 30 minutes in 2023/24, with further improvements towards pre-pandemic levels the following year, including through delivering 800 new ambulances (including 100 specialist mental health vehicles).