Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of trends in the size of waiting lists on excess deaths.

No formal assessment has been made.

The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ outlines how the National Health Service will bring down waiting times across all elective services.

To support this plan and tackle waiting lists, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to drive up and protect elective activity.

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.