Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has provided recent guidance to 999 call handlers on (a) triage standards and (b) redirecting calls to 111 in emergency cases.

Data on the proportion of calls to 999 that were referred to 111 in December 2022 is not available. NHS England’s Integrated Urgent Care Aggregate data collection includes data on the number of calls transferred from 999 to 111, however the latest month for which this data is available is November 2022.

The Department has provided no such guidance. The triage and response to 999 calls is an operational matter for the National Health Service.