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 reduce waiting lists for people needing urgent allergic care.

The Department is working closely with a range of stakeholders from across the Government, the National Health Service, voluntary organisations, and patient representative groups, including the National Allergy Strategy Group, to consider how allergy care and support could be improved.

The Government is committed to returning accident and emergency waiting times to the safe operational waiting time standards set out in the NHS Constitution. In doing so, we will be honest about the challenges facing the health service and serious about tackling them.

The Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 was published on 6 June 2025 and focuses on improvements that will make urgent and emergency care better every day. The plan will:

• ensure that at least 78% of patients in accident and emergency departments will be seen within four hours; and
• reduce the number of patients waiting over 12 hours for admission or discharge from an emergency department to less than 10%.

Further information on the Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/urgent-and-emergency-care-plan-2025-26/

In July 2025, we published the 10-Year Health Plan to create a new model of care, to be fit for the future. This includes establishing the Neighbourhood Health Service, to shift care into the community and reduce demand in emergency departments, which is backed by almost £450 million of capital investment. Further information on the 10-Year Health Plan is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-year-health-plan-for-england-fit-for-the-future