Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure the return of specialist lipid clinics after the covid-19 outbreak; and if he will make extra resources available to manage the backlog of patient appointments as outlined in the HEART UK response to the Health and Social Care Committee Inquiry into Delivering Core NHS and Care Services during the Pandemic and Beyond.

As we moved into the second phase of the National Health Service response to COVID-19, NHS England wrote to the service on 29 April to ask NHS local systems and organisations to step up non-COVID-19 urgent services as soon as possible. The reset of these services will be gradual, with full attention to infection prevention and control as the guiding principle. NHSE/I are working with regional systems, and have provided national advice on restoration of cardiac services. They will also monitor their capacity going forward through this next stage of restoration and recovery.

The full letter to the system can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/04/second-phase-of-nhs-response-to-covid-19-letter-to-chief-execs-29-april-2020.pdf