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 reduce ambulance wait times for Category 2 calls to the national target of 18 minutes.

The Government recognises that in recent years ambulance performance has not met the high standards patients should expect.

In October, NHS England published the Medium Term Planning Framework which sets out ambitious targets to improve core urgent and emergency care performance to constitutional standards, including by shortening average Category 2 response times to 18 minutes. This is being supported by practical actions, including reducing avoidable ambulance dispatches and conveyances and ambulance handover delays.

The measures being taken are already improving ambulance response times, including in North East Hampshire. The latest National Health Service performance figures for the South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, which serves North East Hampshire, show that in October, Category 2 incidents were responded to in 31 minutes 54 seconds on average, over six minutes faster than the same period last year.