Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 16 November (HL2985), if the information about the number of NHS consultant appointments cancelled is not held in the format requested, in what format that information is held.

NHS Digital publishes information on the number of cancelled outpatient appointments as part of Outpatient Hospital Episode Statistics which are published annually. Not all appointments are consultant-led and it is not possible to separately identify the number of cancelled consultant-led appointments.

In 2015-16, 7.6 million outpatient appointments were cancelled by hospitals, representing 6.8% of all appointments.