Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many additional surgical hubs are due to (a) open and (b) be built in the next 12 months.

Dedicated and protected surgical hubs transform the way the National Health Service provides elective care by focusing on providing high volume, low complexity surgery, as recommended by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

There are currently 123 elective surgical hubs that are operational across England.

We are working on delivering six additional hubs, five of which are currently expected to open in the next 12 months.

The Department is committed to ramping up the number of hubs over the next three years, so more operations can be carried out.