Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the impact on general practice of the decisions to (a) block book beds in care homes for those assessed as medically fit to discharge and (b) establish virtual wards.

NHS England Virtual wards enable acute level care at home, with the current model of care being led by a lead healthcare provider within either an acute or community provider with collaboration across partners within a system. It is not expected based on the modelling of the national pathways that capacity is drawn from primary care and as implementation develops, we will be able to assess the impact across system health and care partners more accurately. Similarly, the recent £200 million for bedded step-down care will be led by multidisciplinary teams and we will closely monitor the impact on all partners to ensure the programme delivers the anticipated benefits.