Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to reduce elective surgery treatment waiting times for children.

In February 2022, the National Health Service published a delivery plan setting out a clear vision for how the NHS will recover and reduce waiting times for elective services including elective surgery for children and young people.

Steps being taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector, and engaging with patients to understand their choices.

To support this recovery the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available to systems in 2021/22 to help drive up and protect elective activity.

Having virtually met our target to eliminate long waits of two years or more for elective procedures in July, we have also made significant progress in tackling waits of 78 weeks or more for elective services including elective surgery for children. NHS England will soon publish statistics that demonstrate what has been achieved to date.