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 ensure that the average ambulance response time to category two incidents is at least 30 minutes by the 2023-24 financial year.

Our ‘Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services’ aims to reduce Category 2 response times to 30 minutes on average this year with further improvements towards pre-pandemic levels next year.

To grow capacity and improve response times, ambulance services are receiving £200 million of additional funding this year. This is alongside over 800 new dual-crewed ambulances and specialist mental health vehicles.

The delivery plan will also add 5,000 more permanent hospital beds this winter, supported by £1 billion of dedicated funding. This is alongside £1.6 billion of funding for social care to reduce the numbers of beds occupied by patients ready to be discharged. These measures will improve patient flow through hospitals, reducing crowding in accident and emergency and cutting down on delays in ambulances handing over patients so they can quickly get back on the roads.

We have seen significant improvements in performance, with average Category 2 response times in September over 10 minutes faster than the same month last year.