Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to tackle increased waiting times for ambulances in Slough constituency.

NHS England has allocated an additional £150 million for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23 to support improvements to response times through additional call handler recruitment, retention and other funding requirements, including in Slough. 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 for winter 2022/22, to improve patient flow through hospitals and reduce waiting times in transferring ambulance patients to accident and emergency. NHS England is also providing targeted support to some of the hospitals facing the greatest delays in the handover of ambulance patients into the care of hospitals, to identify short and longer-term interventions.