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 improve ambulance response times.

NHS England has allocated an additional £150 million for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23, supporting improvements to response times through additional call handler recruitment, retention and other requirements. The National Health Service is also investing £20 million to upgrade the ambulance fleet in each year to 2024/25, reducing the age profile and emissions of the fleet and increasing productivity.

The NHS will increase bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds to improve patient flow through hospital and reduce long waiting times in transferring ambulance patients to accident and emergency. NHS England is also providing targeted support to some hospitals facing the greatest delays in the handover of ambulance patients to the care of hospitals, to identify short and longer-term interventions.