Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps is his department taking to improve record keeping and documentation within the emergency departments and observation units.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to improving how information is recorded, stored, and used across the National Health Service, including in emergency departments and observation units.
Regarding accident and emergency data, NHS England has published a Data Quality Improvement Plan for the Emergency Care Data Set. NHS England is supporting trusts to improve data quality collection and compliance.
Through our Urgent and Emergency care plan, we are expanding the use of integrated data systems such as the Federated Data Platform and Connected Care Records. We are investing in secure digital platforms and interoperability standards to ensure clinicians can access real-time patient information across hospitals, ambulance services, and community settings. Improving interoperability helps reduce duplication, minimise the risk of errors, and support clinicians to provide safe and timely care.
Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to publish data collected by his Department on the use of corridor care.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The provision of clinical care in corridors is unacceptable, and we are committed to ending its practice in the National Health Service. Furthermore, our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 commits to publishing data on the prevalence of corridor care for the first time.
NHS England has been working with trusts to put in place new reporting arrangements regarding the use of corridor care to drive improvement and data transparency. The data quality is currently being reviewed, and we expect to publish the information shortly.
We are introducing new clinical operational standards for the first 72 hours of care, setting clear expectations for timely reviews and specialist input, further supporting our efforts to eliminate corridor care and improve patient experience.
Asked by: Richard Quigley (Labour - Isle of Wight West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Department is taking to ensure consistent and effective communication between hospital doctors, consultants, and the families of patients during inpatient care.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients first, including ensuring that people have the best possible experience of care. We recognise that poor communication can be a source of frustration and worry for patients and their families, particularly for inpatient care. It is therefore crucial that patients and families receive regular, consistent, and effective updates.
Martha’s Rule is a patient safety initiative to support the early detection of deterioration by ensuring the concerns of patients, families, carers, and staff are listened to and acted upon. It gives patients, their family members, and carers a right to request a rapid review if they’re worried that a patient’s condition is getting worse and their concerns are not being responded to.
Under the NHS Constitution, patients have the right to be involved in decisions about their health and care and must be given the information and support to enable this. Where appropriate this right includes family and carers. Hospitals also have a range of legal and regulatory duties, assured by the Care Quality Commission, to ensure consistent and effective communication, including the Duty of Candour, and the Accessible Information Standard, which requires bodies to identify, share, and meet people’s communication needs, and must adhere to national standards to improve communication within clinical teams.
Additionally, improving perioperative care is a key priority for the Government. Better communication between patients and healthcare teams is a key part of improved perioperative care. To improve and standardise the quality of perioperative services in England, Getting It Right First Time is collaborating with NHS England’s Digital Outpatient, Elective Recovery, and Elective Workforce Recovery teams to form the National Perioperative Care Programme.
The programme recognises that shared decision making, where a clinician collaborates and supports a patient and, if a patient wishes, a carer or someone close to them, to decide their treatment, should be embedded in all perioperative pathways, and should begin at the earliest opportunity when surgery is considered.
It is also recognised that local providers are best placed to decide how to embed and maintain perioperative care approaches into their organisations, to reflect local needs and circumstances.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
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 accuracy of trust-level reporting on the use of temporary escalation spaces.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The provision of clinical care in corridors is unacceptable, and we are committed to ending its practice in the National Health Service by the end of this Parliament. Furthermore, our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 committed to publishing data on the prevalence of corridor care.
NHS England has been working with trusts to put in place new reporting arrangements regarding the use of temporary escalation spaces to drive improvement and data transparency. The data quality is currently being reviewed, and we expect to publish the information shortly.
We will also be introducing new clinical operational standards for the first 72 hours of care, setting clear expectations for timely reviews and specialist input, further supporting our efforts to eliminate corridor care and improve patient experience.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
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 impact of staff parking charges on recruitment and morale at James Paget Hospital.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No assessment has been made of the impact of staff parking charges on recruitment and morale at James Paget Hospital.
The health and wellbeing of National Health Service staff is a top priority, and all NHS organisations have a responsibility to create supportive working environments for staff, ensuring they have the conditions they need to thrive.
As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will work with the Social Partnership Forum to introduce a new set of staff standards for modern employment, covering issues such as access to healthy meals, support to work healthily and flexibly, and tackling violence, racism, and sexual harassment in the workplace.
All NHS hospitals in England are expected to follow the published NHS Car Parking Guidance. The guidance makes clear that where hospital car parking charges exist, they should be reasonable for the area.
In addition, free hospital car parking is already in place for ‘in-need’ groups, and this includes NHS staff working overnight.
Asked by: Alex Brewer (Liberal Democrat - North East Hampshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to update the multi-criteria decision support analysis to ensure that hospital wave allocations within the New Hospital Programme reflect estate conditions and patient environment standards.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the New Hospital Programme’s Plan for Implementation, a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) tool was used to help prioritise schemes to support the development of funding options. Criteria included deliverability, estate condition, clinical outcomes and patient assessment of care environment for each of the hospitals falling within the scope of the review. The input data and scoring mechanism within the MCDA was reviewed with NHS England and Departmental colleagues to validate its appropriateness. The Programme reserves the right to adjust the delivery plan as schemes develop in the future.
The plan is available at the following link:
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what cross government support is provided to local authorities to identify the location of, and those buried in, historic unmarked mass child graves in England such as those discovered in Royton, Oldham.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises the distress caused to bereaved parents by these historic practices and we commend the work that families and charities have been doing to highlight this issue and support other bereaved parents. We are working across Government to better support parents searching for the final resting place of their child’s remains and will ensure they are given as much help as possible. Ministers from across Government will be meeting shortly to discuss this issue, to ensure effective cross-Government coordination and support for affected families.
Tracing a baby’s grave or a record of cremation can be a very difficult time for people both mentally and emotionally. It is important, therefore, that parents searching for the final resting place of their child’s remains are given as much help as possible. The Government expects all hospitals and burial and cremation authorities to assist by providing all information and records available to them, to any parents that enquire about what happened to their stillborn babies and their final resting place, in a timely manner.
The 2025/26 Local Government Finance Settlement makes available over £69 billion for local government. The majority of funding in the Local Government Finance Settlement is unringfenced, recognising that local leaders are best placed to identify local priorities.
Standards from the mid-1980s onwards brought an end to the historic practice of placing the remains of stillborn babies’ bodies in unmarked graves. The current death certification process means that this historic practice is no longer possible.
Asked by: David Smith (Labour - North Northumberland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that patients awaiting elective surgery are provided with clear and timely information about their position on waiting lists; and whether his Department has considered introducing a system that allows patients to (a) track their approximate place in the queue and (b) receive regular updates on expected waiting times.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure patients are seen on time and have the information they need to have the best possible experience of care.
As set out in the Elective Reform Plan, published January 2025, patients should expect clear communications that meet their needs throughout their time on a waiting list. This includes information about how long they might wait for their appointment and details about how and when to contact their provider. We are currently working with patients and carers to publish minimum standards patients should expect while they wait for planned care. This includes considering patients’ communication needs.
We have also taken steps to deliver important digital interventions to ensure patients can receive clear and timely information whilst waiting for care. Since March 2025, patients at 87% of hospitals can view information about their elective appointments, estimated waiting times, and average waiting times by specialty on the NHS App. By March 2027, we will significantly improve information about waiting times on the NHS App for patients in elective care and will expand proxy access for parents and carers. We will also review the role and functionality of My Planned Care, which currently provides average waiting times and other information for patients waiting for care. High quality non-digital options should always be in place for those that need them.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on cancer diagnosis wait times in South Holland and the Deepings in the last five years.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold this data, although published data from NHS England is available from 2022 for the cancer waiting time standards, at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cancer-waiting-times/
Cancer waiting times data can be broken down by integrated care board or National Health Service trust, however, this data is not available by constituency. The local NHS trusts for the South Holland and the Deepings constituency are North West Anglia, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn, and United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals.
Asked by: Steve Darling (Liberal Democrat - Torbay)
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 impact of the Wait 45 policy for ambulance wait times, including on corridor care and patients being looked after in sub-optimal areas.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England continues to regularly monitor trust performance.
We are tackling unacceptable ambulance handover delays by introducing a maximum 45-minute standard, supporting the quicker release of ambulances, helping them get back on the road to treat patients. These delays should be recognised as a system wide responsibility and effective collaboration between ambulance services, acute trusts, integrated care boards, and other providers is required.
Nationally, we have seen average handover delays fall to 31 minutes 19 seconds in October compared to 40 minutes 20 seconds in October 2024. This reflects the improvements in Category 2 response times to 32 minutes 37 seconds from 42 minutes 15 seconds over the same time period.
We are also committed to ending corridor care. When Release to Rescue is implemented, ambulance trusts must put in place robust patient protection measures. Patients should only be cared for in temporary escalation spaces when all other options are exhausted, and this must not become standard practice.
Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan set out steps we are taking to improve accident and emergency waiting times, including the commitment to publish data on the prevalence of corridor care. The data quality is currently being reviewed, and the information will be published shortly.