Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s report entitled The State of Emergency Medicine in England, what steps his Department is taking to (a) improve patient safety and (b) reduce excess deaths associated with waits of 12 hours or more in emergency departments.

The Government is committed to restoring urgent and emergency care waiting times to the standards set out in the NHS Constitution. The medium-term planning framework for the National Health Service published in October 2025 includes a commitment that 85% of patients wait no more than four hours in accident and emergency by 2028/29, as well as committing to reduce year on year, between 2026/27 and 2028/29, the proportion of patients who wait over 12 hours in accident and emergency.

Improving flow through emergency departments is critical to delivering the four- and 12-hour accident and emergency standards. To support this, the Government has provided £450 million of capital investment, including in new and expanded Same Day Emergency Care and Urgent Treatment Centres, additional mental health crisis capacity, and connected care records for ambulance services. In February 2026, the NHS published new national clinical standards, including The Model Emergency Department and The Model Acute Pathway, to support more consistent, high-quality care, and improve flow through hospitals.

We are committed to eradicating corridor care, and in partnership with organisations including the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, have published the first consistent national standard for corridor care. From June 2026, for the first time, NHS England is publishing monthly data on instances of corridor care, to support trusts to identify and target action to reduce it.