Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government has taken to develop post-covid-19 plans for tackling waiting lists for the next five years for (a) hospital appointments, (b) treatment times, (c) elective surgery and (d) non-elective surgery; and how advanced that planning is.

The current focus is on accelerating the return of non-COVID-19 health services to near normal levels, including making full use of available capacity between now and winter, whilst also preparing for winter demand pressures. This will be done alongside continued vigilance with respect to any COVID-19 spikes locally or nationally.

First priority will be given to clinically urgent patients and then the longest waiting patients.

The Department continues to work with NHS England and NHS Improvement on the longer-term recovery of NHS services. To help facilitate this the Chancellor announced an extra £31.9 billion for health services, plus an additional £16.4 billion to tackle coronavirus.