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 (a) discharge patients from hospitals and (b) reduce the number of patients in hospital who do not meet residency criteria.

The Government is investing £600 million this year and £1 billion next year through the Discharge Fund for local authorities and National Health Service integrated care boards to spend flexibly based on their local needs. This will include the purchase of short-term packages of care, community-based reablement capacity and building the workforce capacity needed to continue to support care users.

We are also supporting all systems to improve their care transfer hubs through the support offer set out in the 'Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care', which includes webinars, actions learning sets and sharing best practice. Care transfer hubs link across health, social care, the voluntary sector and housing partners to coordinate complex discharges. This will help to ensure patients are discharged safely and to the right setting as soon as possible.