Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to relieve pressure on ambulance workers and to improve working conditions within the ambulance service.

Steps to relieve pressures on ambulance staff and reduce vacancies include NHS England and NHS Improvement allocating ambulance trusts an extra £55 million to boost staff numbers ahead of winter. This will help to recruit more 999 call handlers and clinicians to work in control rooms and bolster frontline staffing capacity and for the National Health Service national health and wellbeing team to work in partnership with the ambulance trusts to provide tailored health and wellbeing support to staff, both to make a difference in the short-term and lay the foundations for a long-term shift towards a preventive approach.