Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions her department has had on building (a) surgical and (b) medical readiness within the NHS as part of plans for improving national resilience, including mass casualty response.

The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England play an active and ongoing role in all contingency planning, coordinated by the Cabinet Office, to prepare for major crises and emergencies, and to feed into the UK Government Resilience Action Plan, available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-government-resilience-action-plan

Further information on NHS England’s Emergency Preparedness response function is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/eprr/