Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of the number of intensive care unit beds in the UK on the number of transplants that per capita the NHS can provide.

NHS Blood and Transplant launched a new United Kingdom-wide organ donation and transplantation strategy in July 2013. Taking Organ Transplantation to 2020 sets out the action necessary to increase organ donation and transplant rates building on the significant increase in donor and transplant rates since 2008. It is vital that all potential donors are identified and referred to the specialist donation team. The strategy recognises that commissioners should keep the demand for intensive care beds under review to ensure that intensive care capacity is not a barrier to donation.

There were 10.6 adult critical care, paediatric intensive care and neonatal intensive care beds per 100,000 population in England in May 2015. The numbers of such beds in the rest of the United Kingdom is a matter for the devolved administrations.