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 waiting times for NHS treatment in (a) Liverpool, Walton constituency and (b) England.

Reducing waiting times for National Health Service treatment in England, including in Liverpool, Walton constituency, is one of the 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, engaging with patients to understand their choices, increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs and rolling out up to 160 Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) by March 2025. These include an established spoke CDC at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, to which general practices in Liverpool, Walton constituency can refer patients for key diagnostic checks, tests and scans.

The NHS is reducing long waits despite more people coming forward for treatment. Waits of 18 months or more have now been virtually eliminated (7,289 patients were waiting 18 months or more for treatment as of July 2023, a decrease of more than 94% from its peak in September 2021). We are taking action to bring down waits of over a year, including reducing the number of people requiring unnecessary follow-up appointments, to free up capacity.