Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that 76% of patients are admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours in A&Es by March 2024.

Under our Delivery plan to recover urgent and emergency care services, we are taking a range of measures to improve patient flow through hospital and reduce waiting times in accident and emergency.

These include the delivery of 5,000 more staffed, permanent beds this year compared to 2022/23 plans, supported by £1 billion of dedicated funding. This is alongside a further £1.6 billion of funding for social care to reduce the numbers of beds occupied by patients ready to be discharged. We are also improving hospital discharge processes by establishing ‘Care transfer hubs’ in every hospital ahead of next winter, alongside new approaches to step-down care to free up bed capacity for those who need it. We are also scaling up the use of virtual wards by an additional 3,000 beds, with over 10,000 beds now available nationally.