Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of NHS funding to tackle the backlog of (a) elective surgeries and (b) other non-emergency procedures.

The Government is committed to making the best possible progress against the ambitions set out in the Elective Recovery Plan (ERP), despite a range of constraints that have impacted on delivery. These constraints have included, but were not limited to, higher than expected COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 related bed occupancy, and periods of disruptive industrial action.

The Government regularly reviews progress against the ambitions in the ERP, including affordability, and the impact of the constraints listed above. The Government is planning to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, to help drive up and protect elective activity.

This is supported by NHS England’s planning guidance, which in 2023/24 set an initial elective recovery target of 107%, delivered through a payment-by-result mechanism. To reflect the impact of industrial action, the Government and NHS England agreed to revise the elective activity target to 103% for the remainder of 2023/24, and in November 2023 provided an additional £800 million of funding from a combination of reprioritised and new funding, to mitigate the costs of industrial action. Planning guidance for 2024/25 will set out the ambitions for 2024/25, and will be published shortly.