Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to paragraph 2.33 of the Operating Framework for the NHS, whether it remains Government policy that minimum waits must take account of the healthcare needs of individual patients.

The Operating Framework for the National Health Service for 2012/13 that the Department published in November 2011 is no longer current. NHS Operating Planning and Contracting Guidance for 2017-19 is the current operating guidance. Patients are treated based on clinical assessment of priority.

The NHS Constitution outlines that patients have a right to start consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral for non-urgent conditions. If this is not possible, the NHS must take all reasonable steps to offer a suitable alternative provider that can treat them sooner, if this is clinically appropriate and it is what the patient wants. Clinical priority is the main determinant of when patients should be treated followed by the chronological order of when they were added to the list. Clinicians should make decisions about patients’ treatment and patients should not experience undue delay at any stage of their referral, diagnosis or treatment.