Alongside measures to reduce demand and admissions, such as the vaccine roll-out and new therapeutics for covid, the NHS is creating maximum possible capacity and investing in improved discharge arrangements, use of independent sector beds, virtual wards and Nightingales to provide surge capacity. There is investment in delivering more than 20,000 additional clinical staff this year compared with August 2020.

There is local flexibility to allow residents to be safely admitted to a care home during outbreak restrictions, following a risk-based approach that takes into account the size of outbreaks, who is affected, care home size and layout, rates of booster vaccination and current Care Quality Commission rating.

We have already taken a number of steps to increase our workforce, including meeting targets for 50,000 more nurses and having over 20,000 more clinically qualified staff compared with August 2020.

I am always happy to meet him, and I have raised this subject on a number of occasions.

Decisions on hospital reconfigurations and changes to local hospital systems are a matter for the local NHS, following full consultation and consideration of the needs of local communities. The NHS as a whole will continue to look at what bed capacity is needed to meet future need.

I am always happy to take the opportunity...to thank the amazing NHS workforce for the work they have done. I pay tribute to the work of the teams at Mount Vernon and Watford General.

Those discussions began last year, prior to the peak of this wave. We believe that the use of the independent sector...to provide additional capacity is absolutely the right thing to do.