Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the occupancy rate of hospital beds in England; and what plans his Department has to increase the number of unoccupied beds in hospitals in the event of a public health emergency.

As well as critical care beds, NHS England has five world-leading, highly specialised units and 19 trusts able to step up additional specialist capacity.

In a public health emergency, routine services will inevitably come under pressure, which is why the National Health Service will flex its response in line with well-established escalation protocols. In relation to the Chief Medical Officer’s recent announcement on COVID-19, hospitals have been advised on what next steps they need to take to respond to any outbreak and hardworking staff are working round the clock to test and treat patients with coronavirus and work is under way to explore all practical options to increase capacity.