Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of waiting times for NHS treatment.

Patients are waiting too long to access the care they need, with over 6 million people waiting for treatment across 7.6 million pathways. Tackling this is a key part of our Health Mission. We will start by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, as the first step in our commitment to ensuring patients are treated within 18 weeks.