Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to find a short-term solution to overcrowding in hospitals, following reports that hospitals are redeploying nurses from wards to look after patients in corridors.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have monitoring in place 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is to ensure that where pressures are the most acute, actions in line with local escalation policies are instigated with the view to providing an immediate decant of an accident and emergency department to prevent care from having to be provided in corridors. Plans include provision of additional capacity and actions that are designed to de-escalate the situation at times of operational pressure.