Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to assess the healthcare needs of women with autism and ADHD during menopause.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
No specific assessment has been made. Menopause is a priority area within the Women’s Health Strategy, and the Department and National Health Service are implementing an ambitious programme of work to improve menopause care so all women, including those with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), can access the support they need.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for providing services that meet the needs of their local population. Every ICB is expected to have an Executive Lead for learning disability and autism, whose remit includes supporting the board in addressing the health inequalities that autistic people and people with a learning disability experience, and supporting equal access to care across all health services.
From 1 July 2022, the Health and Care Act 2022 requires Care Quality Commission registered providers to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism, appropriate to their role. Since November 2022, over 1.7 million people have completed the first part of Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism. In addition, NHS England is improving the use and recording of reasonable adjustments to ensure care is tailored appropriately for disabled people, including people with autism and ADHD.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Streatham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has taken steps with NHS England to ensure that parents who have experienced stillbirth or neonatal death are (a) encouraged and (b) supported to (i) ask questions and (ii) talk about their experience as part of the NHS review of their care.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Perinatal Mortality Review Tool (PMRT) provides robust and standardised reviews for bereaved parents about why their baby died. The tool’s aim is to also ensure local and national learning to improve care and prevent future baby deaths. All trusts and health boards across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are using the PMRT.
On 14 December 2023, Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK published their fifth annual PMRT report. The report found that most trusts and health boards ensure all bereaved parents were made aware of the PMRT and review process in their unit, and 95% reported that they offer parents the opportunity to share their thoughts, questions, or concerns about any aspect of their care for the review to address.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many Perinatal Mortality Review Tool reviews into (a) stillbirths and (b) baby deaths had an external panel member in the last year.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This information is not held in the format requested. On 14 December 2023, Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK published their fifth annual Perinatal Mortality Review Tool report. The report presents data from the 4,111 reviews conducted between March 2022 to February 2023. The report sets out that an external member was present in 45% of reviews, which is an increase from only one in three involving an external member from the previous year. An external panel member is strongly recommended due to the importance of providing fresh eyes to support the review.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of discontinuing funding for T1DE pilot schemes on the health and well-being of patients living with type 1 diabetes with disordered eating.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England has provided funding for eight integrated care boards (ICBs) across the country to support the development and establishment of Type 1 Diabetes with Disordered Eating (T1DE) services in every National Health Service region. Funding has been provided on a pump prime basis, and the responsibility for the longer-term sustainable provision of care for these patients sits with the relevant integrated care system.
A nationally commissioned evaluation has shown the positive impact that the provision of T1DE services can have for patients, including reductions in HbA1c, which is linked to reduced rates of diabetes complications, and reduced rates of emergency admissions.
It’s the role of the ICBs to consider the health needs of their populations, in making decisions about the care that is provided. It is expected that ICB leads consider these evaluation findings alongside the risk to patient health and wellbeing of the discontinuation of service provision, as well as other local contextual factors in making decisions about the future provision of T1DE services.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how her Department plans to use Section 95 (3) 251ZA Information Standards (Compliance) of the Health and Care Act 2022 to ensure that NHS providers meet the communication needs of patients set out in the Accessible Information Standard.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department plans to implement Section 95 later this year. This will be subject to Parliament’s approval of the regulations setting out the procedure for preparing and publishing mandatory information standards, on which the Department has recently consulted.
Once Section 95 is in force and compliance with information standards becomes mandatory, the Department will use section 251ZA, where appropriate, to monitor compliance with information standards, including by requiring National Health Service providers and others to whom information standards apply, to provide information for this purpose.
NHS England is responsible for the Accessible Information Standard (AIS), and plans to update the AIS to take account of the statutory approach to information standards in due course. NHS England has also completed a review of the AIS to help ensure that the communication needs of people with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss are met in health and care provision. One of the aims of the review was to strengthen assurance of implementation of the AIS, and a self-assessment framework has been developed to support providers of NHS and social care services to measure their performance against the AIS, and develop improvement action plans to address gaps in implementation.
NHS England will publish a revised AIS in due course. Following publication, NHS England will continue work to support its implementation with awareness raising, communication and engagement, and updated e-learning modules on the AIS, to ensure NHS staff are better aware of the standard, and their roles and responsibilities in implementing it.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Sixth-Fifth Report of the Committee on Public Accounts of Session 2022-23 on Progress in improving NHS mental health services, HC 1000, if she will make an assessment of the reasons for the reported shortage of mental health professionals in the NHS workforce.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We are committed to attracting, training, and recruiting the mental health workforce of the future, as well as retaining and developing our current workforce. Since 2016, we have expanded and diversified the types of roles that are available, as well as upskilling and transforming the workforce to deliver innovative models of care. However, while there have been significant increases, we acknowledge that the rise in demand for services means that more growth is needed to improve and expand services, to keep in line with this. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out the need to grow the overall mental health and learning disability workforce the fastest of all care settings, at 4.4% per year up to 2036/37.
To support this ambition, the plan sets out a number of targeted interventions for the mental health workforce, including increasing mental health training places by 13% by 2025/26 and 28% by 2028/29. These interventions will be delivered via partnerships working across the Department of Health and Social Care, integrated care systems and providers, as well as with wider partners such as the Department for Education and Office for Students.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make it her policy to make an assessment of the potential impact of any proposed amendments to Part IX of the Drug Tariff on (a) patients with continence care needs, (b) continence care services, (c) the range of continence devices available to clinicians and patients and (d) new product development and innovation in medical devices in the continence sector.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Part IX will remain a list of devices available to be prescribed in the community, via the FP10 prescription route. The Department believes that it is currently difficult to identify which devices are broadly comparable, and whether more expensive devices provide added value. The proposed amendments that were consulted on were intended to increase meaningful choice, not to decrease the choice for clinicians and patients. Comparison between products can increase awareness of different brands amongst prescribers, which can support small and medium sized businesses in entering the market.
The consultation response on the proposed amendments to Part IX is expected to be released in May 2024, which will outline the Government’s response. Any amendments that are taken forward will happen gradually, with review points and engagement with stakeholders, including industry, patient representatives, clinicians, and National Health Service organisations. We are aware that there are some very good devices in use, relied upon by clinicians and patients.
Asked by: David Morris (Conservative - Morecambe and Lunesdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has plans to make (a) adult MMR and (b) shingles vaccines available in community pharmacies for people who meet the NHS eligibility criteria.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Routine vaccinations, including the shingles vaccine, are not currently available at community pharmacies via the National Health Service. This is with the exception of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine where, in response to the current measles outbreak, some areas have stood up community pharmacy sites on a time-limited basis, to deliver the MMR vaccine to specific cohorts.
The NHS vaccination strategy signals an intent to give local systems the responsibility and flexibility to design and deliver vaccination services to meet their population needs. This includes commissioning the optimal provider network, which may include community pharmacy and hospital hubs, and continuing to use the expertise of primary care, including general practices and practice nurses, to maximise uptake.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of bowel cancer diagnosis services in (a) Stockport and (b) Greater Manchester.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department continues to take steps to improve early diagnosis for all cancers, which encompasses bowel cancer, and in all areas, including Stockport and Greater Manchester. The Department is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care, which includes plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment.
NHS England is working to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS), which sets a target of 28 days from urgent referral by a general practitioner or screening programme to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out. To achieve this target, NHS England has: streamlined bowel cancer pathways by implementing faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) triage for patients in primary and secondary care settings; implemented non-symptom specific pathways for patients; and opened community diagnostic centres across England, prioritising this capacity for cancer services. The latest published data from February 2024 shows FDS performance was 78.1% nationally. More specifically to bowel cancer, the latest published data shows that at a national level, the number of people diagnosed with bowel cancer has risen to 41,596 in 2021, compared to 37,702 diagnosed in 2019. Since the FIT kit was introduced into the bowel cancer screening programme in April 2019, national uptake has increased from 59.2% to 67.8%. the latest data for the North-West region shows that 64.3% of 60 to 74-year-olds completed their bowel screening in the first quarter of 2023/24.
In 2023 the NHS England’s Help Us Help You campaign urged people to take up the offer of bowel screening when invited, and the screening offer for the bowel screening programme is being gradually extended from age 60 down to 50 years old by 2025, ensuring more people are screened and potentially diagnosed with bowel cancer at the earliest stage. NHS England is also now offering routine preventative bowel cancer screening to people with Lynch syndrome, with 94% of people on average receiving the test between 2021 and 2023, up from 47% in 2019.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of trends in the level of average waiting times for receiving NHS mental health (a) treatment and (b) other support services on the (i) wellbeing and (ii) employment of patients requiring those services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
While no such assessments have been made, through the NHS Long Term Plan the Government is providing record levels of investment and increasing the mental health workforce, to expand and transform National Health Service mental health services in England, helping to reduce waiting times. The NHS is also working towards implementing new waiting time measures for people requiring mental healthcare in both accident and emergency and in the community, to increase transparency, drive improvements in the quality of data, promote timely access to the most appropriate and high-quality support, and drive accountability in local systems.
The 2023 Spring Budget contained a package of over £400 million to support the long-term sick and disabled in remaining in or entering employment. This included approximately £75 million for the expansion of the Individual Placement and Support scheme, to help people with severe mental illness into employment. At the 2023 Autumn Statement, we announced a further £795 million of funding to increase the number of sessions per course of Talking Therapies treatment and broaden access, leading to an expected additional 384,000 people completing a course of treatment by 2028/29. It will also fund an additional 100,000 Individual Placement and Support places over five years, which will help people with severe mental illness gain and retain paid employment.