Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what long-term plans he has to ensure that the NHS is (a) a resilient and (b) a strategic protective service in order to tackle future health emergencies.
NHS England and NHS Improvement have a statutory requirement to formally assure their own and the National Health Service in England’s readiness to respond to emergencies on an annual basis. To do this, NHS England and NHS Improvement ask commissioners and providers of NHS-funded care to complete an Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response annual assurance process. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/eprr-annual-assurance-guidance-v2.0.pdf
NHS England also produces an Incident Response Plan (National). This is the overarching generic plan that details how NHS England reviews and responds to any health-related incident or emergency at the national level, there are plans which describe the regional response and each NHS organisation will have its own Incident Response Plan. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/NHS-england-incident-response-plan-v3-0.pdf