Elective Care Recovery

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

We hope that the funding will deliver around 9 million more checks, scans and procedures, and we hope to support our aim for the NHS to deliver around 30% more elective activity by 2024-25, compared to pre-pandemic levels. As part of that, we have allocated £2.3 billion to increase the volume of diagnostic activity, and we are rolling out at least 100 further community diagnostic centres by 2024-25 to help with the backlogs of people waiting for clinical tests such as MRIs, ultrasounds and CT scans. These increases will allow the NHS to carry out 4.5 million additional scans by 2024-25, increasing capacity and enabling earlier diagnosis.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, today I received a message from a member of the public who said that a relative had been told by their NHS doctor that they could not even give them a timeframe for when treatment would be available, but that they could ring a private hospital where treatment would be available in a couple of weeks. Does the Minister acknowledge that there is a real conflict in resources between private and public? What will the Government do to deal with people left in that really difficult situation?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The Government clearly recognise that there is a backlog, which is why we have announced the additional funding. We hope to announce the elective recovery plan very soon. The other measure that we have taken is launching My Planned Care, which allows NHS providers to upload supportive information to the platform to help patients to manage their conditions while they wait for treatment. There will also be personalised support, including advice on prevention services et cetera. We also hope that, eventually, it will have more data on expected waiting times, for example, so there will be more information for the patient. At the same time, we hope that the additional investment that we have announced will help to tackle the backlog in elective recovery.