Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the final National Strategy for Disabled People will include a focus on the potential effect of backlogs in care and treatment caused by the covid-19 outbreak on the number of years people with long term conditions have had to live with a disability.

The National Disability Strategy will be published in the shortly. The strategy will take into account the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on disabled people and will focus on the issues that disabled people say affect them the most in all aspects of life.

Separately, and ahead of the strategy’s publication, the Department for Health and Social Care has already taken comprehensive action to address potential backlogs in care and treatment.

In April 2021, NHS staff completed 1.8m diagnostic tests and began treatment for 1.1m patients, against the backdrop of caring for 400,000 seriously ill COVID-19 patients in hospital since the pandemic began.

The 2020/21 Spending Review provided £1 billion to help tackle the elective backlog and support hospitals to cut long waits for treatment, systems are asked to deliver activity levels above set thresholds in order to access this additional funding as Elective Recovery Funding (ERF).

On 13 May 2021, NHS England launched a £160 million initiative to tackle growing waiting lists. A network of "accelerator" areas has been established to pilot new initiatives, including extra clinics at weekends, virtual assessments at home and new clinics that can complete high numbers of cataract operations.

During the pandemic, £450 million was provided to expand and upgrade A&E departments to reduce overcrowding and improve infection control so we can continue to treat both Covid and non-Covid patients safely.