Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans health providers have put in place to restart outpatient clinics and protect visitors from covid-19; and what steps those providers are taking to communicate that information to patients.

We continue to work closely with the National Health Service and partners and guidance has already been issued to the NHS on the process of starting to restore urgent non-COVID-19 services in a safe way, with excellence in infection prevention and control as a key principle. The approach to the reset of services will be flexed at local level according to capacity and demand in different parts of the country, and will be gradual. The NHS ‘Help us to help you’ media campaign also encourages all patients in need of urgent or emergency medical care to seek appropriate treatment.