Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps they are taking to help ensure that their Department (a) gives sufficient attention to long term strategic challenges, (b) does not allow current events to slow down work on long term strategic issues and (c) consistently undertakes horizon scanning.

The Department prioritises responding to the long-term strategic challenges facing health and social care, alongside responding to current events. For example, the recently published NHS England Long Term Workforce Plan sets out how we will deliver a National Health Service workforce that meets the needs of the population over the next 15 years. The Department is also producing a Major Conditions Strategy, for which the Department published an initial report in August.