Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many private hospital beds have been used since the start of the covid-19 outbreak; and what the cost is of each of those beds per night.

National Health Service patients are benefitting from an unprecedented partnership with private hospitals in the United Kingdom as we battle the COVID-19 outbreak. The NHS is accessing these facilities at cost, with those costs judged by an independent auditor. Reimbursements to the independent sector will be for reasonable and narrowly-defined costs only.

The latest collected information shows that over 215,000 patient contacts had taken place under the contract. As lockdown eases and elective activity starts to resume utilisation of the contract is increasing. It is currently not possible to estimate the cost to the public purse.