Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord True on 4 May (HL3274), what assessment they have made of the other factors that are potentially contributing to the increased death rate; what estimate they have made of the number of non-COVID-19 related deaths resulting from the measures taken to prepare for a surge in NHS hospital admissions; and how many operations were cancelled or postponed in anticipation of a surge in COVID-19 cases.

No formal assessment has yet been made of other factors contributing to excess deaths, but the Department is carrying out extensive work with Public Health England, the Office for National Statistics and the Care Quality Commission to better understand the virus and causes of excess deaths.

The National Health Service does not collect data on operations which have been cancelled or postponed on a national level, except for on the day urgent cancellations for non-clinical reasons. About five operations each day are urgently cancelled for non-clinical reasons, although this is a significantly small subset of cancellations. Information on the data held on cancelled elective operations can be found in Cancelled Elective Operations, which is attached.