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 support Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust in addressing the long waits for ambulances and emergency care at the acute hospital in Cornwall.

We are committed to improving urgent and emergency care and returning to the waiting time standards set out in the National Health Service constitution through actions set out in Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 and the Medium Term Planning Framework for 2026/27 to 2028/29.

On the 6 June 2025, we published our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26, backed by a total of nearly £450 million of funding. The plan focuses on improvements that will see the biggest impact on urgent and emergency care performance next winter and on making urgent and emergency care better every day, including reducing ambulance handovers to a maximum of 45 minutes and actions to support at least 78% of patients in accident and emergency being seen within four hours.

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has been focusing on its ‘clinical vision of flow’, alongside whole system work which is delivering improvement in urgent and emergency care performance.