Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the availability of critical care beds in London; and what plans he has to increase the availability of critical care beds for each (a) NHS and (b) Foundation Trust in the UK.

In March 2020, the National Health Service had 3,700 critical care beds for adults and, as part of the readiness for the likely influx of more COVID-19 patients, was taking concerted action to free up to a third of the general and acute beds. This was to enable 30,000 of the 100,000 general and acute beds to be available for COVID-19 patients.

The NHS is making sure that, as well as overall hospital beds, intensive care beds, operating theatres, repurposed recovery bays, mechanical ventilation and other facilities across the hospital sector are expanded to provide the greatest possible capacity.