Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce delayed hospital discharges.

The Department is working with NHS England and NHS Improvement, local government and social care providers to monitor and address the underlying causes of delayed discharges. A new national taskforce has been established to focus on the National Health Service and local authority actions required to reduce delayed hospital discharges. We are also making use of non-acute beds in local health and care systems, personal health budgets, hotel beds for stepdown care and bed capacity in hospices. Enhanced discharge funding has been provided until March 2022 to provide the resources needed to support patients to leave hospital as quickly and as safely as possible.