Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NHS England has the power to prevent the implementation of minimum waiting times for routine elective care.
NHS England does not encourage commissioners to apply minimum waits across their contracts but rather to concentrate on interventions that help manage the demand for elective care.
It remains the case that all patients should receive high quality and safe care in the right place at the right time within the 18-week Referral to Treatment standard.
Clinical priority remains the main determinant of when patients should be treated followed by the chronological order of when they were added to the waiting list.