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 prioritise the reduction of waiting times in the NHS.

In 2018/19, the Government has provided the National Health Service with an additional £1.6 billion to support and improve accident and emergency and elective care performance. Furthermore, the NHS Long Term Plan has set out how the NHS will develop over the coming years. This will be supported by an extra £20.5 billion a year in real terms by 2023/24. Under the Long Term Plan, the local NHS is being allocated sufficient funds over the next five years to grow the amount of planned surgery year on year, to cut long waits, and reduce the waiting list.

In the shorter term, NHS England’s ‘Operational and Planning Guidance for 2019/20’ sets out deliverables against key performance areas, including referral-to-treatment and urgent care, and the Government expects the NHS to deliver these actions set– in full – as key steps towards fully recovering performance against core access standards.