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 reduce NHS waiting times.

Cutting National Health Service waiting lists is one of this Government’s top priorities. We are making good progress on tackling the longest waits, to ensure patients get the care they need when they need it.

To tackle waiting lists and reduce waiting times in England, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity. This is supported further by £5.9 billion investment in capital for new beds, equipment and technology.

The NHS is also rolling out new and expanded surgical hubs to increase capacity and activity, focusing on providing high volume low complexity surgery. This is backed by £1.5 billion capital funding. There are currently 93 elective surgical hubs that are operational across England.

We have now moved our focus to cutting waits of 65 weeks or more to as near zero as possible, by March 2024. Capacity is being sought across the NHS and the independent sector locally, regionally and across the country to support efforts in hitting this target.