Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits on including yellow fever in the list of vaccines under the Vaccine Damage Payment Act 1979 for which compensation may be paid.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) is not a compensation scheme. There is no assessment of what losses were actually suffered. It provides a one off tax-free lump sum payment, currently £120,000, to successful claimants and is one part of the wide range of support and help available to severely disabled people in the United Kingdom.
The VDPS is primarily designed to cover adverse reactions for vaccination in the child immunisation programme which is a Government initiative to protect the community from infectious disease and does not include travel vaccines.
The Scheme is being kept under review if further inclusions are thought necessary.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of changing the provisions of the Vaccine Damage Payment compensation scheme so that people who suffer a psychiatric injury as a result of an adverse event involving a vaccine can also be fairly compensated for the effects of (a) loss of earnings, (b) the stigma of mental illness and (c) incarceration.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department for Work and Pensions administers the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) on our behalf.
The VDPS is not a compensation scheme. There is no assessment of what losses were actually suffered. It provides a one off tax-free lump sum payment, currently £120,000, to successful claimants and is one part of the wide range of support and help available to severely disabled people in the United Kingdom.
This Scheme is not designed as an alternative to litigation and does not prejudice the right of the injured person to pursue a claim against the manufacturer of the vaccine for compensation.
To qualify for a VDPS payment, the applicant has to meet two legal tests:
- establishing, on a balance of probabilities, that the disablement was caused by a vaccination covered by the VDPS; and
- the resulting disablement is severe disablement (60% or more), assessed on the same basis as for the Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit Scheme.
Disablement is the overall effect of the disability arising from a loss of faculty caused by the vaccine. It is an assessment of the effects of the medical condition, not an assessment of the condition itself. The effects may be physical or mental or both. The level of disablement is made by comparison of the disabled person to a person of the same age and sex whose physical and mental condition is normal.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information he holds on research into safer alternatives to the Stamaril vaccine; and if the Government will provide funding for such research.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Medical Research Council has an active study to assess the safety and immunogenicity of yellow fever vaccine dose sparing strategies for campaign and programmatic use. The study seeks to determine whether using a fractional dose of the normal yellow fever vaccine in infants provides sufficient protection against yellow fever compared with the normal dose of vaccine and whether altering the route of administration affects vaccine safety.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a recent assessment of the effectiveness of the regulatory regime in ensuring that drug companies continuously take steps to minimise the risks from their products.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Holders of marketing authorisations are responsible for on-going monitoring of the safety of the medicinal products they place on the market. Additionally, the safety profile of all medicinal products is continually reviewed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to determine whether there are new risks, if risks have changed, and if any additional risk minimising measures or other regulatory action is required.
Since 2012 it has been a legal requirement for both marketing authorisation holders and medicines regulators to monitor the effectiveness of all such risk minimising measures to determine whether they have had the desired effect. Depending on the findings, further action to minimise risk may be taken.
Recent reviews of the impact of regulatory interventions have been conducted by the MHRA and across the European regulatory network, and further evaluation of the effectiveness of the regulatory regimen in the European Union is ongoing.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has any plans to make ketamine available on the NHS for people with treatment-resistant depression.
Answered by Steve Brine
There are no current plans to make ketamine routinely available on the National Health Service for people with treatment-resistant depression. To be prescribed routinely within the NHS, the manufacturer of a ketamine-based medicine would need to apply for and be granted a marketing authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for this indication.
Ketamine is currently only licenced by the MHRA as an anaesthetic for diagnostic and surgical procedures in adults and children.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the new NHS Indemnity cover for GPs will be extended to GPs working or willing to work for the NHS, who despite being cleared by the GMC and the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service had been declined indemnity by the traditional three indemnity organisations.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The Secretary of State announced on 12 October 2017 that the Government is planning to develop a state-backed indemnity scheme for general practice in England, subject to further work on relevant issues.
We envisage the scheme would provide clinical negligence cover to providers of general practitioner (GP) services (e.g. GP contractors out-of-hours providers of GP services) through which the activities of individual GPs would be covered from the point the scheme is established. It would be available to all contractors who provide primary medical services: General Medical Services, Primary Medical Service and Alternative Provider Medical Services plus any other integrated urgent care delivered through NHS Standard Contracts. The cover would include the activities of practice staff including other medical professionals working for the practice in the provision of these contracted services, and students/trainees working in this area.
Decisions have yet to be made about inclusion of doctors working in other public sector settings including prisons and the Ministry of Defence. We are working with GPs and their representatives, other providers of primary medical services and practice staff to develop the scheme and its scope so as to work best for general practice, and for patients.
Asked by: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if NHS England has a mechanism to investigate and retrieve funds paid to GP practices that claimed high Quality and Outcome Framework (QOF) achievement scores, where CQC Inspectors have subsequently found the scores of those practices were lacking Integrity.
Answered by Steve Brine
Commissioners are required under the General Medical Services Statement of Financial Entitlements Directions 2013 to ensure that all Quality and Outcome Framework (QOF) payments claimed and made are based on accurate and reliable information. In the event this is untrue, then the Commissioner may withhold payment of all or part of an Achievement Payment that is otherwise payable.
QOF guidance also sets out the verification process in relation to QOF payments, including any requirements in relation to post payment verification. In relation to an unfavourable Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection, Commissioners would be expected to follow the processes set out in NHS England’s published Framework for responding to CQC inspections of general practitioner practices.
The Commissioner may recover the money paid by deducting an equivalent amount from any payment payable, and where no such deduction can be made; the contractor must pay that equivalent amount.