Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of the cost to the NHS of patient transfers from ambulance to A&E taking longer than 15 minutes in each of the last five financial years.

No estimate is currently planned. The Government recognises the pressures on the National Health Service and the impact this is having on ambulance response times, including in Shropshire.

We are determined to turn things around, and our 10-Year Health Plan will be published in the summer, setting out major NHS reforms to move healthcare from the hospital to the community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.

The NHS Urgent and emergency care plan 2025/26, published on 6 June 2025, requires health systems to focus on those areas that are likely to have the biggest impact on urgent and emergency care services this year. The plan includes actions that will reduce category 2 ambulance response times to 30 minutes and reduce ambulance handovers to 45 minutes, helping to get 550,000 more ambulances back on the road.