Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a comparative assessment of the effectiveness of (a) Urgent Treatment Centres and (b) Accident and Emergency Departments.

Urgent treatment centres and emergency departments, also known as accident and emergency, provide a different range of services to patients.

Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for this year will continue the expansion of urgent treatment centres that are co-located with emergency departments. This allows for the effective streaming of patients away from emergency departments, helping to reduce the number of people who spend time there, and overcrowding.