Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
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 short-term readmissions following mental health inpatient discharge.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In 2023, NHS England published guidance on the commissioning and delivery of acute inpatient mental health care for adults and older adults, which is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/acute-inpatient-mental-health-care-for-adults-and-older-adults/
This encourages integrated care boards and mental health providers to monitor the length of hospital stay, the number of people who are clinically ready for discharge and who have not been discharged, reasons for delayed discharges, and reasons for readmission within six months, in order to monitor the effectiveness of local discharge arrangements and to identify improvements.
NHS England is also delivering a universal culture of care improvement programme, which all National Health Service and major independent providers are participating in. The programme is based on co-produced standards for high quality inpatient care, which include commitments to improve discharge and follow up support.
Improving access to high quality community mental health care is critical to reducing the number of avoidable admissions to hospital and supporting people in community settings following a hospital spell. Since 2019, NHS England has invested significant additional funding to support services to transform and expand services in line with the vision set out in the Community Mental Health Framework. The new approach integrates community mental health services with primary care, whilst also improving partnerships with voluntary, community, and social enterprise organisations, local authorities, and other local organisations to offer people holistic and personalised care for both their clinical and social needs, with both a ‘need-led’ and ‘no wrong door’ approach.
NHS England continues to prioritise improving services for people with mental health problems, including through the development of new guidance on delivering personalised care and support, for instance the Personalised Care Framework: a Modern Care Programme Approach, the piloting and rollout of 24/7 Neighbourhood Mental Health Centres across the country, and the development of a new modern service framework for severe mental illness expected in 2026.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to improve post-discharge support for mental health patients.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The first statutory guidance on discharge from mental health hospitals, published in 2024 under the NHS Act 2006, emphasised the importance of communication and collaboration between responsible agencies to ensure the patient’s safe and timely discharge and continued care and support after hospital.
This is underpinned by the Community Mental Health Framework, which sets out a vision for new models of integrated primary and community mental health services to address longstanding challenges in mental health services, including maximising continuity of care. Neighbourhood mental health centres build on this model, bringing together a range of community mental health services under one roof, including crisis services and short-stay beds, ensuring people’s holistic needs can be met. To ensure that people are provided with the right support to live successfully and safely in the community after discharge, section 117 of the Mental Health Act places a duty on the National Health Service and local social services authorities to provide after-care to eligible patients who have been detained in hospital for treatment, under certain sections of the act.
We know there are sometimes disagreements between local authorities over who should be paying for a persons’ after-care and what services should be provided. The Mental Health Bill seeks to address these issues and bring clarity, mitigating delays to the provision of aftercare services.
There is also the NHS Continuing Healthcare, which is a package of NHS-funded ongoing care for adults with the highest levels of complex, intense, or unpredictable needs, who have been assessed as having a primary health need, to meet needs that have arisen as a result of disability, accident, or illness.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans are in place to ensure that the medical records of deaf and hearing-impaired patients are appropriately marked prior to the introduction of the Single Patient Record in 2028.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Reasonable Adjustment flag is part of the NHS Spine, and professionals and their administrative staff can work with an individual to create the flag using the National Care Records Service, to ensure that an individual’s needs for reasonable adjustments are recorded and shared, to ensure appropriate support by health and care services. Work is continuing to allow direct integration of the flag with clinical systems, using the Patient Flags Application Programming Interface.
The Single Patient Record (SPR) programme is at an early stage of development. Inclusivity and ease of access is central to the vision for the design of the SPR, and the record of people’s reasonable adjustments, and their needs, will be part of the information made available to staff.
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, how many NHS providers are making use of the NHS barcode.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England figures show that 81 trusts in England use National Health Service number barcodes on patient identification wrist bands. This total includes a mix of trusts compliant with the former ISB 1077 and the current DCB1077 standard, a standard which supports the accurate, timely, and safer identification of NHS patients in England, by using barcodes for positive patient identification. 37 trusts, of the 81 trusts, are compliant with the current DCB1077 standard.
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 meetings or engagements Ministers or senior officials from his department have had with any of the following patient organisations to discuss newborn screening: (a) Genetic Alliance UK (b) UK LSD Collaborative (c) UK Newborn Screening Collaborative (d) ArchAngel MLD Trust (e) MPS Society (f) MLD Support Association UK (g) SMA UK (h) Immunodeficiency UK (i) Alex, The Leukodystrophy Charity (j) Metabolic Support UK, since July 2024.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government remains committed to improving the lives of people living with rare diseases through the UK Rare Diseases Framework, which includes faster diagnosis as one of its four priorities.
In all aspects of population and targeted screening, ministers are advised by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC). When assessing the case for newborn screening for rare diseases, as with all other diseases and conditions, the UK NSC uses internationally recognised criteria and a rigorous evidence review and consultation process. It is only where the UK NSC is confident that the offer to screen provides more good than harm that a screening programme is recommended. When the UK NSC makes a screening recommendation, ministers are then asked to consider and make a decision on whether to accept the recommendation.
This year, the UK NSC secretariat carried out a review of the committee’s stakeholder engagement strategy and activities. The review included an online survey and three focused stakeholder discussion groups that were attended by a total of 17 external stakeholders, including seven representatives of patient organisations representing rare diseases affecting newborns. The UK NSC stakeholder strategy is being updated to incorporate their valuable feedback and is expected to be published in early 2026.
Although the Department screening team supporting the UK NSC has limited capacity to meet with individual stakeholders, they actively involve and engage with stakeholders and partners in other ways. For example:
The Department screening team meets regularly with the Department’s rare diseases team to discuss overlapping areas of work. The rare diseases team have working relationships with the wider rare diseases community and junior officials have met with Genetic Alliance UK.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
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 implications for his policies of trends in the number of illegitimate businesses and rogue retailers selling tobacco and nicotine products.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Underage and illicit sales of tobacco and vapes undermine the Government’s work to protect people from harm and risk of addiction. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will strengthen enforcement, supporting legitimate businesses and cracking down on rogue retailers who breach tobacco and vape regulations. The bill introduces new £200 fixed penalty notices in England and Wales for certain offences, including underage sales, and enables the introduction of a retail licensing scheme in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland for the sale of tobacco, vapes, and nicotine products, and a new registration scheme for tobacco, vape, and nicotine products sold on the United Kingdom’s market.
Alongside the bill, we are investing £30 million of new funding for enforcement agencies in 2025/26, including Trading Standards, HM Revenue and Customs, and Border Force. This funding is being used to support the enforcement of illicit and underage tobacco and vape sales in England, including a boost to the Trading Standards workforce by recruiting 94 new apprentices.
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 plans he has to allocate funding for redundancy packages (a) following the abolition of NHS England and (b) for Integrated Care Boards.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the abolition of NHS England, we are clear on the need for a smaller centre, as well as scaling back integrated care board running costs and National Health Service provider corporate cost reductions in order to reduce waste and bureaucracy.
£860 million of planned resource funding has been re-profiled from later to earlier years of the Department’s Spending Review settlement. This will enable the Department to continue making progress towards halving headcount across the Department and NHS England. This will unlock savings of £1 billion a year by the end of the Parliament, equivalent to the cost of over 115,000 extra hip and knee operations.
Asked by: Caroline Johnson (Conservative - Sleaford and North Hykeham)
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 reasons for increases in levels of lead poisoning in children.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UK Health Security Agency coordinates the Lead in Children Exposure Surveillance System, a passive surveillance system covering England, which aims to identify elevated blood lead concentrations, greater than 0.24µmol/L, the equivalent to ≥5μg/dL, in children under 15 years old.
Between 2016 to 2020, the annual number of cases ranged between 33 and 49. From 2021 there was a marked increase in the number of cases. The steep rise in reported cases from 2021 onwards is due to a change in the case definition in our surveillance system. Following a review of the evidence of the harm of lead exposure in children, the public health intervention concentration was lowered from 0.48μmol/L, the equivalent to ≥10μg/dL, to 0.24μmol/L, the equivalent to ≥5μg/dL.
Asked by: Caroline Johnson (Conservative - Sleaford and North Hykeham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the final report of the Cass Review, published in April 2024, what steps he is taking to help ensure the data linkage study is completed.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what measures his Department is taking to mitigate any potential increase in waiting times for neurodiverse assessments in Runnymede and Weybridge as a result of the recent ICB decision to pause assessments through the Right to Choose with the provider Psicon.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has recognised that, nationally, demand for assessments for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has grown significantly in recent years and that people are experiencing severe delays for accessing such assessments. The Government’s 10-Year Health Plan will make the National Health Service fit for the future and recognises the need for early intervention and support.
It is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) in England to make appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including providing access to autism and ADHD assessments, in line with relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.
The Medium-Term Planning Framework, published 24 October, was explicit that ICBs and providers are expected to optimise existing resources to reduce long waits for autism and ADHD assessments and improve the quality of assessments by implementing existing and new guidance, as published.
In April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance to help ICBs and the NHS to deliver improved outcomes for people referred to an autism assessment service. NHS England has continued to support services to identify challenges and how they might overcome these. NHS England also established an ADHD taskforce to better understand the challenges affecting those with ADHD, including in accessing timely and equitable access to services and support. We are pleased that the final report was published on 6 November, and we are carefully considering its recommendations.