Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reasons Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS trust has had a 13.2 per cent reduction over the past 12 months away from the target of ensuring that 92 per cent of patients are waiting less than 18 weeks for planned operations and care; how many discussions he has had with Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS trust to understand for what reasons they (a) rank 127th out of 127 NHS trusts for that target and (b) have not achieved that target for 27 continuous months; what steps he has taken over the past 12 months to support such planned treatments within Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS trust; and what steps he plans to take to support that trust in meeting that target.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care attends weekly meetings with NHS England and NHS Improvement to discuss National Health Service performance at a local level. It is the responsibility of NHS trust boards, their commissioners and regulators, and of the clinicians who work at trusts, to ensure service delivery meets the required performance standards.

In addition to these regular meetings, the Secretary of State attended a meeting with representatives of North Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust on 24 April 2018 to discuss ongoing quality and performance issues.

A range of actions have been taken and are underway to help improve performance at the Trust, including working with the Emergency Care Improvement Programme to formulate and enact an action plan, implementing a system of primary care streaming and planning to establish an urgent treatment centre co-located with the accident and emergency department and a specific improvement focus on the 62-day cancer standard and the elimination of long waits for treatment.