Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to permanently increase bed capacity in the NHS.

There are currently no plans to permanently increase bed capacity across the National Health Service. However, we continue to work closely with the NHS on capacity planning to ensure we have sufficient beds to meet future demand. Our hospitals continue to flex their bed capacity as part of planning to meet the demand from both elective and emergency streams and we are working hard with trusts to maximise the number of open beds.