Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department is taking steps to (a) identify and (b) implement best practice from other countries on improving ambulance response times.

The ambulance service maintains an overview of international clinical literature and evidence and takes account of developments and improvements as appropriate.

NHS England is providing targeted support to some hospitals facing delays in the transfer of patients from ambulances in addition to a Winter Improvement Collaborative programme to identify the causes of handover delays and implement best practice. This will be supported by an additional £3.3 billion in 2023/24 and 2024/25 to improve urgent and emergency care performance. The National Health Service will set out detailed recovery plans in the new year, including plans to improve Category 2 ambulance response times to pre-pandemic levels.