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 increase hospital bed capacity over the winter months.
The National Health Service will receive an extra £5.4 billion this year to support its response to COVID-19, which includes £478 million to continue the enhanced hospital discharge programme to increase bed capacity and support patient flow through hospitals. This is in addition to an extra £1 billion to tackle the elective care backlog, with more than £8 billion allocated for the next three years, which could provide approximately nine million additional checks, scans and procedures.