Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to reduce waiting times for medical treatment for children and young people.

Cutting National Health Service waiting lists, including for elective child health services, is one of this Government’s top priorities.

To support elective recovery, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity. Steps taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternative capacity in other trusts or the independent sector and engaging with patients to understand their choices.

We have met our target to virtually eliminate long waits of two years or more for elective procedures in July 2022, and significantly reduced the number of patients waiting 18 months or more by April 2023 by over 91% from the peak in September 2021.