Department of Health and Social Care

Eligibility for the seasonal influenza vaccination programme is based on the advice and recommendations of the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). This advice is kept under regular review.

Trends in influenza activity varies across the season, and from season to season. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) publishes weekly flu surveillance reports, which are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-2024-to-2025-season

The UKHSA has confirmed that during this season so far, flu activity has been higher than in the winter of 2023/24, but similar to levels seen in the 2022/23 season.

The Government will continue to support the provision of radiotherapy machines, however, since April 2022 the responsibility for investing in new radiotherapy machines has been with local systems. NHS England will allocate funding to trusts to purchase new radiotherapy machines, and trusts may purchase different types of machines. Therefore, it is not yet known how many machines will be purchased.

The number of radiotherapy machines in use which are over the 10-year recommended age is not published by NHS England.

The Department continues to advise patients to follow National Health Service guidance on sun protection. This advice is available publicly on the NHS.UK website, which is available at the following link:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/seasonal-health/sunscreen-and-sun-safety/

It includes guidance on the extra care that should be taken for babies and children.

The NHS Payment Scheme (NHSPS) replaced the national tariff from 1 April 2023. Following consultation, some amendments have been made for 2024/25, which came into effect on 1 April 2024. The amendments in the 2024/25 NHSPS included specialist radiotherapy services. In September 2024, a revised set of 2024/25 prices was published, which includes radiotherapy services and workforce tariffs. These prices have been updated to reflect a revised cost uplift factor for 2024/25.

NHS England held a series of workshops in October 2024 to set out, and seek feedback on, potential proposals for the 2025/26 NHS Payment Scheme, and other aspects of the NHS finance system expected to come into effect from 1 April 2025.

No specific assessment has been made on the adequacy of mouth and throat cancer diagnosis waiting times.

However, it is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer as early and quickly as possible, to treat it faster, and ultimately to improve outcomes.

The Department is committing to improving waiting times for cancer treatment, starting by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, to support faster diagnosis and access to treatment.

The following table shows the number of organs donated, the number of donors, and the number and percentage of organs donated that were transplanted, from the UK Transplant Registry, between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2024, as of 10 January 2025:

Note: there are many reasons why organs cannot be transplanted, including the organ being clinically unsuitable.

Figures are subject to change due to the delayed notification of living organ donor transplants and the current proximity to the end of 2024.

The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England, as the national cancer registry, collects diagnosis and treatment data on cancer patients in England. The NDRS does not hold data on the number of people who developed secondary breast cancer after completing the 10-year recommended hormone therapy. Further information on the NDRS is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/ndrs

NHS England and the integrated care boards are responsible for ensuring healthcare needs of local communities are met. These responsibilities include considering adequate healthcare provision, care, and wider support for local populations, including in remote and rural areas. This includes radiotherapy treatment. The Government will work to ensure that the best standard of healthcare is available no matter where people live.

Addressing healthcare inequity is a core focus of the 10-Year Health Plan, to ensure the National Health Service is there for anyone who needs it whenever they need it. We have established 11 working groups to take forward policy development that will feed into the plan. This includes working groups focused on how care should be designed and delivered to improve healthcare equity, alongside ensuring that access to healthcare services is effective and responsive.

The Government recognises that a cancer-specific approach is needed to meet the challenges in cancer care, and to improve outcomes for people living with cancer. Following publication of the 10-Year Health Plan, we will publish a new national cancer plan, which will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients. We will continue to ensure that we train the staff we need to ensure patients are cared for by the right professional, when and where they need it, and the cancer plan will reflect this.

In summer 2025, we will publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade and treat patients on time again. We will ensure the National Health Service has the right people, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.

The United Kingdom’s world-class health research ecosystem makes us a natural and leading partner for the United States’ research community and life sciences. The United States ranks the highest in the number of co-authorships, between UK researchers and researchers in international organisations, of peer reviewed biomedical journal papers. The Government will continue to encourage close working between our respective research funders to support cutting-edge, collaborative research between the UK and the United States.

In 2024, NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) attempted 8,532,133 outbound calls to all donors across whole blood, platelets, and plasma for medicine. Of this total figure, 37.5%, or 3,199,031, call attempts resulted in a donor receiving up to three call attempts in a single day. Multiple attempts in a single day are generally to offer last minute appointments to eligible donors, or to ensure a session has a suitable blood mix ahead of sessions taking place.

NHSBT recently launched a new automated system to better target donors and reduce the number of calls needed to fill appointments and collect the appropriate mix of blood needed while meeting donor preferences for contact.

The NHSBT National Contact Centre will call a phone number up to three times a day, or three times within a five-day period, before resting the record, with no further call attempts, for a minimum of 21 days. Occasionally, NHSBT will make additional calls to priority donors, breaking the 21 day ‘rest’ period. This is often where particular blood group stocks are low, or demand exceeds supply.

The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term and increase access to NHS dental care, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the South Norfolk constituency, this is the NHS Norfolk and Waveney ICB.

Research is crucial in tackling cancer, which is why the Department invests over £1.5 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR research expenditure for all cancers was £133 million in 2023/24. Cancer is a major area of NIHR spend, reflecting its high priority.

In the financial year 2023/24, total NIHR spending on direct research awards on brain cancer was £2.1 million spent across 22 active studies, with a total lifetime value of £11.8 million. In the same year, our wider infrastructure investments, which enable the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical, and applied research funded by ourselves, charities, and industry partners, allowed an additional 1,107 people to participate in potentially life-changing brain cancer research in the National Health Service.

In addition to direct research awards, NIHR infrastructure funding enables the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical, and applied research supported by other funders. These investments allowed an additional 1,107 people to participate in potentially life-changing brain cancer research in in the NHS in the same period.

There have not been any discussions between the Department and the Welsh Government about safeguarding the funding of children’s hospices.

The Department works collaboratively with the Devolved Governments to drive forward our objective of supporting people to lead more independent, healthier lives for longer. While health is predominantly devolved, the Department holds some reserved functions and working together across the United Kingdom on health and social care is ingrained in the values of our National Health Service and social care sector.

Children and young people’s hospices in England will receive £26 million in revenue funding for 2025/26, through what until recently was known as the Children’s Hospice Grant. We are also supporting both the children and adult hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. We will set out the details of the funding allocation and dissemination for both funding streams in the coming weeks.

The Government is committed to taking action to address concerns about the safety of the cosmetics sector, and is exploring options for further regulation in this area. We will set out the details of our approach in due course.

The Department does not hold the information requested. As the independent regulator of nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom, and nursing associates in England, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is responsible for nurse registration. The NMC publishes the number of UK trained nursing associates joining its register for the first time in England, which will be a close proxy for the number completing training. Skills for Care data shows that in 2023/24, there were 700 nursing associates in adult social care, a decrease of 50 from 2022/23.

The following table shows the number of UK trained nursing associates joining the NMC register in England for the first time, each financial year from 2018/19 to 2023/24:

Source: Nursing and Midwifery Council, March 2024 Annual Data Report

We have a complete apprentice pathway for nursing, from entry level to postgraduate advanced clinical practice. Nursing associates can go on to become registered nurses through a degree apprenticeship, allowing people to earn a salary while gaining a nursing qualification.

Nursing associates can also become registered nurses by completing a shortened undergraduate nursing degree. For those taking this route, the NHS Learning Support Fund provides eligible students with a non-repayable training grant of a minimum of £5,000 per academic year. The Government keeps the funding arrangements for all healthcare students under close review. The Government attempts to strike a balance between ensuring students are financially supported during their studies and delivering maximum value for money for the taxpayer.

Training and retaining talented National Health Service staff is absolutely central to our mission of rebuilding a health service that is fit for the future. Our 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS will establish how to train and provide the staff the NHS needs, including nurses, to care for patients across our communities. This summer we will also publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade.

The Department has not made a specific assessment of the findings in the National Prostate Cancer Audit's State of the Nation Report. However, the Government understands more needs to be done to improve outcomes for all people with prostate cancer, including for black men.

To address disparities and find ways to better detect prostate cancer, we have invested £16 million in the TRANSFORM trial, aimed at helping to find a way of catching prostate cancer in men, even if they are not displaying any symptoms. This research will ensure that one in ten participants are black men.

Following publication of the 10-Year Health Plan, we will publish a new National Cancer Plan, which will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for all tumour types, including prostate cancer. We are now in discussions about what form that plan should take, and what its relationship to the 10-Year Health Plan and the Government’s wider Health Mission should be. We will provide updates on this in due course.

We are committed to working with the sector to achieve a service that is fit for the future.

As identified by Lord Darzi’s review, primary care is under pressure and in crisis, but there are also demands in other parts of the National Health Service. This has made allocation of available funding very challenging.

As we committed to parliament at the end of last year, we will be resuming our consultation with Community Pharmacy England regarding the funding arrangements for community pharmacy very shortly.

Now that Parliament has voted to give the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill a Second Reading, the Government will assess the impacts of the Bill.

This continues to be a matter for Parliament and, as the Bill progresses, members of Parliament, both Honourable and Right Honourable, will further debate and scrutinise the legislation and the Government will respect Parliament’s will.

It is unacceptable that too many people are not receiving the mental health care they need, and we know that waits for mental health services are far too long. We are determined to change that.

As part of our mission to build a National Health Service that is fit for the future and that is there when people need it, this Government will recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers to reduce delays and provide faster treatment which will also help ease pressure on busy mental health services.

The Department set a deadline of 28 June 2024 for the completion of National Health Service provider audits for the year that ended on 31 March 2024. 38 of the 211 NHS providers, representing 18%, did not meet the deadline.

The Government is committed to improving the lives of those living with rare diseases, such as Addison’s disease. The UK Rare Diseases Framework sets out four priorities collaboratively developed with the rare disease community, which include increasing awareness of rare diseases among healthcare professionals and improving access to specialist care, treatments, and drugs.  We remain committed to delivering under the framework and will publish an annual England action plan in 2025.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) provide primary care practitioners with a readily accessible summary of the current evidence base and practical advice on best practice. Currently, the NICE has a CKS on Addison’s disease. This includes when to suspect Addison’s disease, a management section, and a self-care advice section to support both patients and family members or carers. Further information on the NICE’s CKS on Addison’s disease is available at the following link:

https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/addisons-disease/management/

NHS England has previously published a National Patient Safety Alert on Steroid Emergency Card to support the early recognition and treatment of an adrenal crisis in adults. These alerts require action to be taken by healthcare providers, to reduce the risk of death or disability. Further information on the alert is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/national-patient-safety-alert-steroid-emergency-card-to-support-early-recognition-and-treatment-of-adrenal-crisis-in-adults/

We know that vapes and other nicotine products are being deliberately branded and advertised to appeal to children. This must be stopped to protect future generations from being hooked on nicotine. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill has been introduced to Parliament, and bans vapes and nicotine products from being deliberately promoted and advertised to children to stop the next generation from becoming hooked on nicotine. The bill will ban all forms of advertising of vaping and other nicotine products, including in local vape shops, as well as sponsorship agreements which promote them.

We must also reduce the visibility and accessibility of vapes to protect children and non-smokers from getting hooked on nicotine. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will provide powers to introduce future regulations on where and how vapes and other nicotine products can be displayed, including in the windows and inside local vape shops.

NHS England runs Help Us Help You campaigns to increase the knowledge of cancer symptoms and address barriers to acting on them, to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. The campaigns focus on a range of symptoms, including symptoms of lobular breast cancer, as well as encouraging body awareness, to help people spot symptoms across a wide range of cancers at an early point.

NHS England and other National Health Service organisations, nationally and locally, also publish information on the signs and symptoms of many different types of cancer, including lobular breast cancer. Further information can be found on the NHS.UK website.

On 28 November 2024, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced plans for England’s first Men’s Health Strategy, to be delivered this year.

The strategy will be informed by a call for evidence which will be launched shortly. The call for evidence will seek views on what is currently working and what more needs to be done to support the health of all men.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has developed interventional procedures guidance on high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatment for prostate cancer and focal therapy using HIFU for localised prostate cancer. This type of guidance considers if interventional procedures are safe and work well enough for wider use in the National Health Service, and both pieces of guidance acknowledge that there is a lack of evidence on quality-of-life benefits and long-term survival.

The NICE’s guidelines recommend that HIFU should not be offered to people with localised or locally advanced prostate cancer, other than in the context of controlled clinical trials comparing their use with established interventions.

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) last reviewed screening for sudden cardiac death (SCD) in people under the age of 39 years old in 2019, and concluded that screening should not be offered. Further information is available at the following link:

https://view-health-screening-recommendations.service.gov.uk/sudden-cardiac-death/

Research showed that current tests are not accurate enough to use in young people without symptoms, and that treatments and interventions were not based on good scientific evidence to prevent SCD.

To stop SCDs in young people, the current consensus is to focus on rapid identification and care of people who are likely to be at risk of SCD due to a family link or because they have had symptoms, and to train people to carry out cardiopulmonary resuscitation and to use defibrillators.

NHS England has published guidance for inherited cardiac conditions which requires services to investigate patients with previously undiagnosed cardiac disease, suggestive symptoms, or patients from families with sudden unexplained deaths. Where a genetic variation is identified, cascade testing is offered to relatives based on risk.

We are aware that the UK NSC has received a submission via its annual call process to consider SCD screening in young people aged 14 to 35 years old engaging in sport. The UK NSC is currently reviewing all annual call proposals. Further information on the annual call process is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nsc-annual-call-submitting-a-screening-proposal/uk-nsc-annual-call-how-to-submit-a-proposal

The Government is committed to taking action to address concerns about the safety of the cosmetics sector and is exploring options for further regulation in this area. We will set out the details of our approach in due course.

The Government is committed to taking action to address concerns about the safety of the cosmetics sector and is exploring options for further regulation in this area. We will set out the details of our approach in due course.

The Department is working closely with the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office and with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to tackle inappropriate advertising of overseas cosmetic surgeries in the United Kingdom. The ASA is taking enforcement activity against any company which contravenes UK advertising standards.

The Department does not have data on the overall costs to the National Health Service for treating complications from cosmetic procedures conducted overseas. We are exploring ways to improve our understanding of the scale of the cost to the NHS.

On 1 January 2025, indefinite restrictions preventing new patients aged under 18 years old from being supplied with puberty blockers for the purposes of gender incongruence and/or gender dysphoria, under the care of private or non-United Kingdom prescribers, took effect.

The Government is committed to transparency and accountability in its decision-making and understands people will wish to understand how this decision was reached. Further to my response on 7 January 2025 to the Noble Lord’s question, HL3426 tabled on 12 December 2024, I can confirm that the Government will publish shortly the full independent report by the Commission on Human Medicines on the indefinite banning order of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria and/or incongruence. I will gladly write to the Noble Lord when this it is published.

Services for those with musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, including arthritis, are commissioned locally by integrated care boards (ICBs). The Department expects MSK services to be fully incorporated into integrated care system planning and decision-making.

As announced in the Get Britain Working white paper, we are delivering the joint Department for Work and Pensions, Department of Health and Social Care, and NHS England, Getting It Right First-Time (GIRFT) MSK Community Delivery Programme. With a £3.5 million funding boost, GIRFT teams will deploy their proven Further Faster model to work with ICB leaders to further reduce MSK community waiting times, including for those with arthritis, and improve data and metrics and referral pathways to wider support services.

We will deliver an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments per week during our first year in Government, as a first step in our commitment to ensuring that patients can expect to be treated within 18 weeks. The Government announced £1.5 billion of new capital investment in the Autumn Budget, including investment for new diagnostic scanners and surgical hubs. This investment in scanners will build capacity for over 30,000 additional procedures and 1.25 million diagnostic tests as they come online.

To support health and care professionals in the early diagnosis and management of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, and in the provision of services for people living with arthritis, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has published expert guidance for rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, with both pieces of guidance available, respectively, at the following two links:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng100

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng226

The Department funds research into MSK conditions, including arthritis, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Through this route, the Department spent approximately £26.3 million on MSK research in 2023/24, and £79.2 million since 2019/20. In particular, the Leeds Biomedical Research Centre aims to improve treatment for osteoarthritis. The NIHR, in collaboration with Versus Arthritis, also funds a dedicated UK Musculoskeletal Translational Research Collaboration, aligning investment in MSK translational research and creating a United Kingdom-wide ambition and focus to drive cutting edge research and improve outcomes for patients.

In order to improve awareness and understanding of arthritis amongst primary care professionals, including general practitioners, the Royal College of General Practitioners has produced an e-learning module on inflammatory arthritis, in partnership with the British Society of Rheumatology.

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has announced the intention for there to be a single patient record, so professionals have the data they need when treating patients and are able to make better informed decisions and deliver more preventative health and care. We are in the early stages of engaging with the public and stakeholders to understand their views about the use of health and care data. We will use the findings to form the basis of our future plans.

Furthermore, NHS England is investing £1.9 billion to support hospital trusts to either adopt a new or improve their existing systems, to ensure every hospital in England can benefit from digital transformation, to achieve the vision of a digitised National Health Service by March 2026.

The aim of the Frontline Digitisation programme is for all secondary care trusts to have an electronic patient record system (EPR) that meets our standards. The programme is forecasting to achieve 97% EPR coverage by the programme end in March 2026, with the remaining 3% of trusts having advanced in their plans for an EPR.

We have committed to training more general practitioners (GPs) across the country and to recruiting over 1,000 newly qualified GPs through an £82 million boost to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) over 2024/25. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has confirmed that recently qualified GPs who are employed via the ARRS will continue to be supported through the scheme in 2025/26.

We have announced a proposed £889 million uplift to the GP contract for 2025/26, with a rising share of total National Health Service resources going to general practice and we are currently consulting the profession on key proposals to improve GP recruitment.

We are committed to improving the capacity within general practice and improving access to face-to face appointments. We have pledged to guarantee a face-to-face appointment for all those who want one and bring back the family doctor for those who would benefit from seeing the same clinician regularly.

In October 2024, we provided an £82 million boost to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme, enabling the recruitment of 1,000 newly qualified general practitioners (GPs) across England, increasing the number of appointments delivered in general practice, benefitting thousands of patients that are struggling to receive the care they desperately need. Additionally, we have announced a proposed £889 million uplift to the GP contract for 2025/26, with a rising share of total National Health Service resources going to general practice. We are currently consulting the profession on key proposals to improve access to general practice, continuity of care and GP recruitment.

NHS England’s regional teams are working closely with the integrated care boards to ensure that appropriate action is being taken to address and mitigate the issues identified within each declared critical incident, including at the Royal Liverpool Hospital. This includes actions to support the flow of patients through the hospital and the reprioritising of resources to support urgent and emergency care.

The dementia diagnosis rate is not calculated for patients aged under 65 years old. This is because the numbers of patients known to have dementia in the sample population age groups comprising the zero- to 64-year-old age range is not large enough for reliable estimates to be made.

The Primary Care Dementia Data publication includes a monthly count of the number of patients aged 65 years old and under who do have a dementia diagnosis on their patient record, which is expressed as a raw count, and as a percentage of registered patients aged zero to 64 years old.

It is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including autism assessments and support services for autistic people, in line with relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines.

On 5 April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance to help ICBs and the National Health Service to deliver improved outcomes for children, young people, and adults referred to an autism assessment service. The guidance also sets out what support should be available before an assessment and what support should follow a recent diagnosis of autism based on the available evidence.

The Department and NHS England are committed to reducing long waits and improving timely access to community health services. This includes improving access to Speech and Language Therapy through the Early Language and Support for Every Child (ELSEC) pathfinder project within the Department for Education’s existing £70 million Change Programme in partnership with NHS England. The ELSEC programme provides training and support to education settings to increase their ability to support speech, language, and communication development.

It is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) services, in line with relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.

On 5 April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance to help ICBs and the National Health Service to deliver improved outcomes for children, young people, and adults referred to an autism assessment service. The guidance also sets out what support should be available before an assessment and what support should follow a recent diagnosis of autism. In 2024/25, £4.3 million is available nationally to improve services for autistic children and young people, including autism assessment services.

In respect of ADHD, we are supporting a cross-sector taskforce that NHS England has launched into challenges in ADHD service provision and its impact on patient experience. The taskforce is bringing together expertise from across a broad range of sectors, including the National Health Service, education, and justice, to better understand the challenges affecting people with ADHD, including timely access to services and support.

National Health Services may sometimes choose to use withheld numbers when contacting patients, including to protect patient privacy and confidentiality, but we appreciate the frustration that patients can feel when they are unable to contact clinical staff, especially following a call from a withheld number, and recognise the importance of patients being able to establish channels of two-way communication.

The Elective Reform Plan, launched as part of the Government’s Plan for Change, sets out the reform and productivity efforts needed to ensure patients are seen on time, but also to improve their experience of care, which includes enhancing and improving two-way communication between patients and NHS services, whether through digital options such as an enhanced NHS App or non-digital routes.

The Department regularly monitors waiting lists for community services, including speech and language therapy, and is committed to reducing long waits and improving timely access to community health services, including for speech and language therapy services for children. Community health services, including speech and language therapy, are locally commissioned to enable systems to best meet the needs of their communities.

All integrated care boards met the Mental Health Investment Standard for 2023/24, meaning that their investment in mental health services increased in line with their overall increase in funding for the year. Information for 2024/25 is expected to become available later this year.

NHS England publishes new waiting time metrics in line with the clinical review of mental health access standards. These are published monthly via the mental health services data set, which delivers robust, comprehensive, nationally consistent, and comparable person-based information for children, young people, and adults who are in contact with mental health services.

This dataset is also used to inform the NHS Mental Health Dashboard and provides transparency in assessing how National Health Service mental health services in England are performing, alongside technical details explaining how mental health services are funded and delivered.