Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when the NHS plans to resume urgent elective surgery; and if he will make a statement.

To help ensure that sufficient capacity was in place to help deal with the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, every hospital in England suspended non-urgent elective operations to help free up additional capacity. The suspension did not apply to clinically urgent care, such as emergency admissions and cancer treatment.

With evidence now suggesting that we have reached the peak of this wave of COVID-19, and with the National Health Service well-placed to provide world-leading care for those who do still have the virus, we have started to reset suspended services. The approach to this will be flexed at local level according to capacity and demand in different parts of the country, and will be gradual, over the coming weeks.