Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to reduce the backlog for operations and enable NHS staff to take all allocated their annual leave in 2021.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have asked local services to draw up plans to tackle the elective backlog, while taking into account staff wellbeing. An additional £1 billion funding has been made available to the National Health Service in 2021-22 to support the start of the recovery of elective activity, to reduce patient waiting times.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have issued planning guidance for 2021-22 which prioritises ‘looking after our people and helping them to recover’. This includes encouraging NHS trusts to offer flexibility for staff to take time off to recover, to allow staff to carry over all unused annual leave, or to buy back unused leave.