Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of including in his Department’s bid to the Treasury for the upcoming spending review recommendations for funding for (a) covid-19 recovery funds for disabled children’s health and care services, (b) a sustainable level of long-term investment in disabled children’s health and care services and (c) a disabled children’s innovation fund.

The forthcoming Spending Review will set out the Government’s spending plans for health and social care for future years. As part of COVID-19 recovery planning we are working with the Department for Education and NHS England and NHS Improvement to improve the provision of health services to disabled children. The Government has allocated more than £6 billion in un-ringfenced funding directly to councils in 2020-21 and 2021-22 to support them with the impacts of COVID-19 spending pressures, including for children’s social care. We have also invested £6.6 billion from March to September 2021 to help National Health Service recovery and an additional £2 billion funding to the NHS in 2021-22 to reduce elective waiting times for patients, including disabled children.