Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what policies he plans to bring forward to enable more hospitals to meet the targets on waiting times for (a) A&E treatment, (b) cancer treatment and (c) planned operations and care.

The Government’s Mandate to NHS England for 2018-19 is clear that it is to maintain and improve performance against core patient access standards including accident and emergency (A&E), cancer and planned operations and care-Referral to Treatment (RTT).

The Government expects the National Health Service to deliver the actions set out in the NHS Planning Guidance for 2018-19 – in full – as key steps towards fully recovering performance against core access standards. This means treating a quarter of a million more patients in A&E, halving the number who have the longest waits for treatment and working towards reducing the number of patients waiting overall. We gave the NHS top priority in the 2017 budget with an additional £2.8 billion of funding for the NHS between 2017-18 and 2019-20, and this has been reflected in the mandate.

To provide the NHS with financial stability, the longer-term plan, announced last month will see NHS funding increase by £20.5 billion per year by 2023/24, the end of the first five years compared with today.