Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to publish an implementation plan alongside the policy paper entitled Reforming elective care for patients, published on 6 January 2025.

There are currently no plans to publish an implementation plan alongside the Elective Reform Plan.

Our Elective Reform Plan sets out the productivity and reform efforts needed to return to the 18-week constitutional standard by the end of this Parliament, and outlines how these will be implemented by National Health Service systems, including a series of milestones for delivery. We have hit our pledge to deliver two million extra elective appointments early, and have now exceeded that pledge by delivering over three million more appointments.

In addition, the Planning Guidance for 2025/26 has since been published and confirmed the interim targets for 2025/26, including a target that 65% of patients wait for 18 weeks or less by March 2026, up from 58.9% in January 2025, with every trust expected to deliver a minimum 5% improvement on current performance over that period.