Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what comparative assessment his Department has made of the relative safety of surgical operations carried out in the daytime and overnight.

The Department has not conducted any comparative assessment centrally concerning the relative safety of surgical operations carried out in the daytime and overnight.

Safeguards apply to all surgery and it is the responsibility of the professionals involved to ensure that they operate to the right level of competence, and of the organisations they work for to ensure that they have in place effective forms of oversight at all times.