Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what extra assistance the Government plans to provide to NHS trusts in England that have ambulance queues almost three times greater than the national average.

The National Health Service will receive an extra £5.4 billion to April 2022 to support performance and the response to COVID-19. This includes £478 million to continue the enhanced hospital discharge programme to ensure bed capacity, improve patient flow through hospitals and improve accident and emergency (A&E) performance. We have also invested £450 million to upgrade A&E facilities in over 120 trusts to improve capacity through expanding waiting areas, increasing the number of treatment cubicles, reducing overcrowding and supporting social distancing.

In addition, NHS England and NHS Improvement are providing support to hospital sites with ambulance queues and handover delay challenges. This includes the placement of specialised hospital ambulance liaison officers, safe cohorting of patients and direct access other area of hospitals to accelerate ambulance handovers. NHS England and NHS Improvement have also provided an extra £55 million for ambulance trusts to increase staffing levels, such as more than 700 additional staff in control rooms and on the frontline. This includes £1.85 million to place hospital ambulance liaison officers at the most challenged hospitals to help address ambulance queues.