Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect of access to (a) social care pathways and (b) GP appointments and primary care on the number of ambulance callouts.

No assessment has been made of the effect of access to social care pathways and General Practice (GP) appointments and primary care on ambulance callouts.

Ambulance services operate as part of an interconnected urgent and emergency care (UEC) system and work closely at the local and regional level to ensure that patients receive the safest and most effective response from the right service to achieve the best outcomes. This includes working closely with urgent community responders, GPs, mental health crisis teams, social care and care home workers to ensure ambulances are called out to only those patients whose needs cannot be safely met by other parts of the UEC system.