Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the ability of ambulance trusts to meet targets for (a) Red 1 and (b) Red 2 category emergency callouts.

The ambulance service is facing unprecedented demand. With December 2015 recording the highest number of Category A calls (Red 1 and Red 2) resulting in an ambulance arriving at the scene.

In the light of this demand, the Secretary of State authorised NHS England to explore whether changes to the way that the ambulance service responds to calls could help improve patient outcomes. The results of this work will be known in the summer.

In the longer term, NHS England’s Urgent and Emergency Care Review will aim to tackle the root causes of the increasing demand by considering whole system change to the delivery of urgent and emergency care, including new models of delivery of care for ambulance services.

Information on the performance of ambulance trusts in respect of the Red 1 and Red 2 national ambulance response times is published on a monthly basis by NHS England and is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/

This shows that 2015/16 year to date performance for Red 1 has improved compared to the same period last year, and Red 2 performance is also progressing towards the national ambulance response time targets.