Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the impact that repeated disruption of energy supplies and national power outages would have on the NHS; and what steps he is taking to mitigate that impact'

While we do not expect any disruption, the Department is working with the health and social care sector to understand the impact of any possible disruption to energy on services. In addition, we are working with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to understand the likely impact of any power outages. All National Health Service organisations are required to have business continuity plans in place to support the continued safe provision of services to patients for a number of different scenarios, including loss of power. These plans seek to minimise the impact of power outages a much a possible so that they can continue to deliver critical services to patients. The Department and the NHS continue to explore further means of reducing such impacts.