Asked by: Liz Twist (Labour - Blaydon and Consett)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the potential impact of increasing national pulmonary rehabilitation referral rates on (a) clinical outcomes for patients, (b) NHS emergency admission rates, and (c) economic productivity lost to respiratory-related illness and caring responsibilities.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is a clinically proven intervention that improves outcomes and reduces hospital admissions for people with chronic respiratory conditions. Health Education England reported in 2022 that increasing access to PR for people with lung conditions could save NHS England £69 million every year and see a reduction of 150,924 general practice appointments, and 26,633 fewer hospital admissions per year. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Respiratory%20Disease%20Report.pdf
NHS England has additionally recently published guidance on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) biologics that reiterates the need for PR to be taken into account when planning care for people with COPD. This provides cost and health benefit information for integrated care boards to help create business cases for setting up COPD services. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/business-case-guidance-copd-biologics/
NHS England holds a quarterly PR steering group that provides direction, challenge and support for decision-making, and monitors progress against set metrics as reported through the national respiratory audit programme. Further information is available at the following link:
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what implementation metrics have been set for the introduction of Staff Treatment Hubs under the 10 Year Plan, including the number of hubs operational by the end of 2026, the regional coverage targets in England and Wales, and the specific performance measures used to evaluate improvements in clinician wellbeing.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10-Year Health Plan committed to the roll out of Staff Treatment Hubs, to provide a high-quality wellbeing and occupational health service for all National Health Service staff. Work is underway to develop implementation and operational plans for the Staff Treatments Hubs. This will determine factors such as location, budgets, timeframes, capacity, and processes for monitoring progress and performance.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Hinckley and Bosworth)
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 adequacy of current safeguards in place to protect NHS staff from patient assaults, and subsequent follow-up procedures.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Everyone working in the National Health Service has a fundamental right to be safe at work. There is a zero-tolerance approach to violence in the workplace.
Individual employers are responsible for the health and safety of their staff, and they put in place measures, including, security, training, and emotional support for staff affected by violence.
Existing measures will be strengthened by the introduction of a new set of staff standards, as detailed in the 10-Year Health Plan.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Hinckley and Bosworth)
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 adequacy of the safeguards to protect mental health facility staff from patient assaults and subsequent follow-up procedures.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Everyone working in the National Health Service has a fundamental right to be safe at work. Violence rates in mental health settings are lower than the national average. Individual employers put in place a robust range of measures, including, security, training, and emotional support for staff that are affected by violence.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department’s policy is on NHS trusts delivering elective care under block contract arrangements.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the commissioning of elective care services, based on the needs of their population.
The NHS Payment Scheme is the set of rules, prices, and guidance that determine how providers of National Health Service-funded healthcare are paid for the services they provide. It is designed to ensure that funding flows fairly and efficiently across the healthcare system. Under the NHS Payment Scheme 2025/26, NHS trusts should not be paid under a block contract basis for elective care. NHS trusts should be paid on the basis of the elective care they deliver.
The only exception is where the value of patient activity between a commissioner and an NHS trust is less than £1.5 million, and in these circumstances the trust is paid a fixed amount for all the activity that they deliver for that commissioner, including both elective and non-elective, to minimise the number of low value transactions between NHS organisations.
NHS England expects each ICB and provider to meet the requirements of the 2025/26 Planning Guidance, including delivering the necessary elective recovery targets. Where systems and providers are failing to meet their plans, NHS England will work with them to ensure appropriate mitigations are in place. This can include escalation into the national tiering programme, and the provision of improvement support. The National Oversight Framework describes how NHS England assesses ICBs and NHS providers, ensuring public accountability for performance. These processes are the same for all providers and systems, regardless of the commissioning arrangements in place.
Details of the 2025/26 NHS Payment Scheme are published at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/25-26-nhs-payment-scheme/
Asked by: Joshua Reynolds (Liberal Democrat - Maidenhead)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce the backlog for NHS England’s Clinical Priorities Advisory Group Prioritisation meeting.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The next Clinical Priorities Advisory Group (CPAG) prioritisation meeting is planned for spring 2026, where policies that are ready and require investment decisions to be taken will be considered. It is expected up to 20 such policies will be considered at the next meeting.
CPAG also continues to meet monthly to consider policy and service specifications that are categorised as cost saving or cost neutral.
Asked by: Joshua Reynolds (Liberal Democrat - Maidenhead)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many times NHS England’s Clinical Priorities Advisory Group Prioritisation meeting happens each year; and when the next meeting will be.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England’s Clinical Priorities Advisory Group (CPAG) meets monthly to consider policy and service specifications that are categorised as cost saving or cost neutral.
CPAG prioritisation meetings are held annually. The next prioritisation meeting is planned for spring 2026.
Asked by: Bradley Thomas (Conservative - Bromsgrove)
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 merits of increasing training for hospital and care home staff on aspiration pneumonia.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Employers in the health system are responsible for ensuring that their staff are trained to the required standards to deliver appropriate treatment for patients.
Care providers are also required to ensure staff receive the support, training, professional development, supervision, and appraisal necessary to carry out their duties safely and competently.
To support providers to do so, the Department provides reimbursement towards the cost of training and qualifications through the Adult Social Care Learning and Support Scheme, backed by up to £12 million in funding this financial year.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure the timely delivery of NHS mail to patients.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Whilst there is an increasing move towards digital National Health Service communications via the NHS App, texts, digital telephony, and emails, NHS letters remain crucial for many patients, particularly those who may be digitally excluded.
All NHS organisations are now required to use NHS Notify to send out patient communications. This service makes sure that patients get messages from NHS organisations in the best channel for their needs and ensures the NHS effectively delivers its services. This is done by routing messages to the secure NHS App, falling back to SMS, email, and letters if they do not, based on a central source of contact details, additional needs, and NHS numbers. By doing this once from a single service, the NHS can make sure the most secure, rapid, reliable, accessible, and cost effective channel of communication is used.
NHS England and Royal Mail have been working together to ensure NHS providers continue to have a choice of both price and speed when sending letters, and to improve how NHS letters are sent to patients across the United Kingdom. There is now a Royal Mail NHS barcode, which was announced in April 2025. The barcode is designed to mitigate the impact on NHS letters by helping to optimise their delivery at times of local and national disruption. Further information may be found on the Royal Mail website, at the following link:
https://www.royalmailwholesale.com/news/nhs-mail-new-barcode-solution
This describes the process by which the prioritisation of NHS communication happens.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
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 hospital handover delays on ambulance response times in (a) Shropshire and (b) the West Midlands.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No such assessment has been made. Ambulance handover and response times for ambulance trusts, including for the West Midlands Ambulance Service, are published monthly by NHS England. This information can be accessed via the Ambulance Quality Indications dataset at the following link:
Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 sets out clear actions to deliver improvements this winter and make services better every day, including reducing ambulance handovers to a maximum of 45 minutes, helping get more ambulances back on the road for patients, and reducing Category 2 ambulance response times to 30 minutes on average. NHS England continues to monitor average hospital handover times, sharing data with regions to support focussed discussions and identify improvement actions with those trusts not achieving handovers in 45 minutes.
The 2025 Medium‑Term Planning Framework commits to faster ambulance responses, aiming for 20‑minute Category 2 times by 2026/27 and 18 minutes by 2028/29.