Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of setting a target for hospitals to not exceed 85 per cent occupancy levels.

Our Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care sets a performance ambition to improve accident and emergency wait times to 76% of patients being admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours by March 2024, rather than a bed occupancy level ambition.

National Health Service trusts are operationally responsible for managing bed occupancy and patient flow as part of delivering improved performance against this ambition. Our plan commits to delivering 5,000 additional beds to the permanent bed base this winter, which supports NHS capacity and occupancy pressures.