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 help (a) reduce paediatric surgical waiting times and (b) ensure timely access to treatment for children requiring surgery.

Our Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, sets out how the National Health Service will reform elective care services and meet the 18-week referral to treatment standard for all patients, including children and young people, by March 2029.  As a First Step to achieving this, we have exceeded our pledge to deliver an extra 2 million operations, scans and appointments in our first year of government, delivering 5.2 million more appointments.

We have made it easier to track elective waiting times for children and young people through the publication of new demographic data as part of monthly inequalities statistical releases. This was a commitment in the Elective Reform Plan and is a big step forward in improving the transparency of waiting times and will provide accountability for children’s elective waiting lists.

The Plan also sets out several commitments specifically in relation to children and young people, including that integrated care boards and providers should ensure interventions are in place to reduce disparities for groups who face additional waiting list challenges; and primary and secondary care clinicians are to improve e-RS functionality (a national digital platform for referring patients into elective care), by including data to enable better prioritisation of children and young people.

Finally, the clinically-led Getting It Right First Time children and young people programme will continue to work with providers to ensure they are implementing best practice to improve children’s outcomes and waiting times across all medical and surgical specialities.