Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 130 of the Strategic Defence Review, published on 2 June 2025, what progress his Department has made in rebuilding medical capabilities for warfighting.

A series of joint wargame exercises have taken place that have been used to identify gaps in medical warfighting capabilities. These exercises continue to inform planning between the National Health Service and the Ministry of Defence to ensure both can respond to a wide range of warfighting scenarios that might affect health and patient care.

The Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS have actively worked alongside the Ministry of Defence to rebuild medical capabilities for warfighting through the introduction of the digital extraction of redacted patient notes from general practice surgeries. This has reduced the recruitment process significantly for medically trained warfighting personnel. Furthermore, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS are also reviewing how military medical staff operate across the NHS in clinical placements.