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 speed up the delivery of care packages for people waiting to be discharged from hospital in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England.

We have provided £3.3 billion to the National Health Service to facilitate timely hospital discharges, including £478 million this winter. We have established a national discharge taskforce, with local and national government and the NHS. The taskforce works with NHS England’s regional teams to support hospital discharge in local areas, including in Coventry, the West Midlands and England.

We have provided an additional £462.5 million for the recruitment and retention of social care workers to support the hospital discharge process, expanded the Health and Care Visa to include care workers and launched the Made with Care national recruitment campaign running until March 2022.