Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the number of hospital beds in the NHS.

Bed availability and occupancy is managed at a local level. Hospitals have a responsibility in ensuring that they are operating with the necessary beds available to support effective patient flow and safety.

The NHS Long Term Plan states:

“We have also been realistic about inevitable continuing demand growth from our growing and aging population, increasing concern about areas of longstanding unmet need, and the expanding frontiers of medical science and innovation. In the modelling underpinning this Long Term Plan we have therefore not locked-in an assumption that its increased investment in community and primary care will necessarily reduce the need for hospital beds”.