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 support NHS ambulance services with service pressures.

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

The National Health Service winter resilience plan is increasing NHS bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, helping reduce pressure in accident and emergency so that ambulances can get swiftly back out on the road.

An additional £250 million has been made available to enable the NHS to buy up beds in the community to safely discharge thousands of patients from hospital, and capital for discharge lounges and ambulance hubs. These measures will help improve flow through hospitals and reduce ambulance handover delays. This is on top of the £500 million already invested last year.