Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that NHS trusts have adequate information on future funding to facilitate planning for rescheduling outpatient appointments cancelled as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.

On 21 July 2020, the Chancellor launched the 2020 Comprehensive Spending Review. The Spending Review, which will be published later this year, will set out the Government’s spending plans for health and social care, setting resource budgets for the years 2021/22 to 2023/24 and capital budgets for the years 2021/22 until 2024/25. Any additional funding secured to reduce elective care backlog would be communicated by NHS England and NHS Improvement via planning guidance.

£3 billion of additional funding was announced by the Prime Minister in July to support the National Health Service. £2.7 billion will go directly to local NHS systems as part of their block contracts for the second half of the year. The remainder is direct commissioning funding which will be distributed at a regional level. The funding will be available to organisations to cover the period from the 1 October to the end of the financial year, which has been calculated to provide systems with the resources to manage ongoing COVID-19 pressures alongside recovering activity levels.