Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits for (a) survivability and (b) preventing future disability of designating strokes as Category 1 for the purpose of ambulance response times.

No specific assessment has been made. The ambulance response time standards were established based on the findings of the Ambulance Response Programme, which analysed more than 14 million 999 calls.

NHS England is providing targeted support to some hospitals facing the greatest delays in the transfer of patients from ambulances and 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.