Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to develop plans to tackle the effect of delayed care in people's health after the end of the covid-19 outbreak.

On 31 July, further guidance was issued to local National Health Service providers and commissioners on outlining the next phase of the NHS response to COVID-19 and concurrent non-COVID-19 activity. Focus is on accelerating the return of non-COVID-19 health services to near-normal levels, including making full use of available capacity between now and winter, whilst also preparing for winter demand pressures.

General practice, community and optometry services have been advised, where clinically appropriate, to reach out proactively to clinically vulnerable patients and those whose care may have been delayed. Trusts, working with general practitioner practices, have been asked to ensure that every patient whose planned care has been disrupted by COVID-19 receives clear communication about how they will be looked after, and who to contact in the event that their clinical circumstances change. Clinically urgent patients should continue to be treated first, with priority then given to the longest waiting patients, specifically those breaching or at risk of breaching 52 weeks by the end of March 2021.