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 ensure that NHS hospitals in (a) Slough, (b) the South East, (c) England, and (d) the UK have sufficient operational capacity to cope with the increased operational pressure of the upcoming winter months.

In Slough, the South East, England areas of concern include maintaining elective activity to recover waiting lists, limiting cancellations of operations, accident and emergency performance and ambulance trusts remaining at high escalation levels. A further concern is the potential increase in demand for emergency care driven by seasonal flu and COVID-19.

To address these concerns, NHS England and NHS Improvement are conducting detailed operational level winter planning with providers, regions and stakeholders and implementing its Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery 10 Point Action Plan. This sets out actions for systems to support improved emergency care performance and patient flow, including providing ambulance trusts with an extra £55 million to increase staff numbers and enhanced monitoring and support to systems and providers through the new Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Unit. This is alongside wider measures to reduce demand this winter, including the seasonal flu vaccination programme and COVID-19 booster vaccines.

We have allocated an additional £5.4 billion to support the response to COVID-19, including an extra £1 billion to tackle the treatment backlog and £478 million to continue the enhanced hospital discharge programme to increase bed capacity.

Areas of concern have not been identified on a United Kingdom basis as healthcare is a devolved matter.