Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many ventilators the NHS (a) has and (b) plans on purchasing.

Ventilator machines are usually linked to patients in Intensive Care Units/Critical Care/High Dependency Units, although some patients may have them at home or use Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machines to assist with their breathing.

We are scaling up intensive care beds. NHS England is looking at National Health Service organisations critical care capacity - including the availability of additional facilities of independent sector providers.

It is also making sure that they have as much ventilation equipment as possible and, crucially, the skilled and trained people to use it.

Information on critical care bed capacity is published by NHS England and can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/critical-care-capacity/

Availability of an NHS critical care bed indicates the associated number of NHS staff with the appropriate skills and training are available to deliver the required treatment.