Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his statement of 6 January 2025 on Health and Social Care Reform, Official Report, column 597, what his definition is of working class areas.

The Department is committed to improving health outcomes across geographies and demographic groups to ensure that there is no two-tier system for healthcare in this country, where those who can afford it pay to go private, and those who cannot are left behind.

The Index of Multiple Deprivation, produced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, is most commonly used as the means to determine the most deprived areas of the country, which are often where health needs are greatest. As an example of targeted support, the Further Faster 20 (FF20) initiative will support 20 trusts with long waits in areas of highest economic inactivity to tackle their waiting lists by improving productivity. Trust teams will work with the FF20 team of clinicians and managers to look at their pathways and ways of working with the aim of improving the way that outpatients, diagnostics, and theatres are run.

On 6 January 2025, NHS England published the new Elective Reform Plan, part of the Government’s Plan for Change, which sets out a whole system approach to hitting the 18-week referral to treatment target by the end of this Parliament. The plan sets out the reform and productivity efforts needed to ensure that patients are seen on time and have the best possible experience during their care. The Plan for Change commits that by the end of this parliament, 92% of all patients will wait no longer than 18 weeks for treatment following a referral.

The Elective Reform Plan sets out a range of new measures to address health inequalities, including that people living in disadvantaged areas are 1.8 times more likely to wait over a year than someone living in one of the least deprived areas. This is why the plan commits not only to make progress on the 18-week standard in 25/26, to 65% nationally, but for all trusts to deliver a minimum five percentage point improvement by March 2026, recognising that we must have high expectations for progress across the country.