Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that integrated care boards (1) better assess the mental health needs of young people, and (2) provide more integrated community based mental health support for young people; and what plans they have to publish statutory guidance for integrated care boards in this area.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards are responsible for determining and meeting the mental health needs of the young people in their local populations, and there are no plans to publish statutory guidance in this area. The Department expects integrated care boards to continue to improve access to community-based mental health support for children and young people under our plans to shift more care out of hospitals and into the community, under the 10-Year Health Plan.
Asked by: Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they plan to publish their response to the consultation on the proposed changes to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 Code of Practice, and a revised timetable for the implementation of the Liberty Protection Safeguards.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is currently reviewing options for the implementation of the Liberty Protection Safeguards. Introduction of the Liberty Protection Safeguards would include a revised Code of Practice. We will set out our plans in due course.
Asked by: Katie White (Labour - Leeds North West)
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 number of mental health conditions among young people.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
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, the Government is recruiting 8,500 mental health workers to help ease pressure on busy mental health services.
The Government is investing an extra £688 million this year to transform mental health services, including reducing the number of children with mental health problems.
The 2025 Spending Review and the NHS 10-Year Health Plan confirmed that we will fulfil our commitment to provide access to mental health support within schools in England by expanding mental health support teams to cover 100% of pupils by 2029/30. This expansion will ensure that up to 900,000 more children and young people will have access to support from trained education mental health practitioners in 2025/26.
Additionally, we are continuing to provide top-up funding of £7 million to the 24 Early Support Hubs to expand their services, and will take part in an ongoing evaluation of these services in 2025/26. This new funding will enable the supported hubs to deliver at least 10,000 additional mental health and wellbeing interventions, so that more children and young people are supported.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of podiatrists; and if he will (a) reinstate full student bursaries and (b) introduce incentives to encourage recruitment and retention in (i) underserved areas and (ii) general.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has no plans to reinstate the bursary for podiatry students, however the Government keeps funding arrangements for all healthcare students under close review.
Supplementary financial support is available to podiatry students through the NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF). The LSF offers non-repayable funding, in addition to maintenance and tuition fee loans provided by the Student Loans Company. This includes a non-repayable training grant of £5,000 per academic year plus an additional specialist subject payment of £1,000 a year for podiatry students, and where eligible, £2,000 per year for students with childcare responsibilities.
We will publish a 10 Year Workforce Plan to ensure the National Health Service has the right people, in the right places, with the right skills to care for patients when they need it.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of data protection laws in ensuring that legitimate complaints processes are dealt with effectively by health bodies.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The handling of patient complaints in the National Health Service is governed by the Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service Complaints (England) Regulations 2009. These regulations set out in law the minimum standards NHS organisations must adhere to in respect of their complaint handling arrangements.
There are strong protections in law to ensure that health and care information is used in a safe, secure, and legal way, and these must be observed in any complaints process. These include: the UK General Data Protection Regulation; the Data Protection Act 2018, which establishes a legal framework for processing personal information and keeping it secure, and for only using it for the purposes for which it was collected; the Human Rights Act 1998, which requires public bodies to respect the private life of an individual, including protecting any information held about them; and the common law duty of confidentiality.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the (a) number of students who graduated in nursing and (b) number and proportion of those graduates who were employed within six months in the last four years, broken down by higher education institution.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) publishes information on the number of United Kingdom trained nurses joining their register for the first time, who are resident in England. The following table shows the number of UK trained nurses joining the NMC register in England for the first time by financial year:
Financial year | Number of UK qualified registered nurses joining the NMC register for the first time |
2021/22 | 15,132 |
2022/23 | 16,420 |
2023/24 | 18,478 |
2024/25 | 19,670 |
Source: Nursing and Midwifery Council, March 2025 Annual Data Report.
The Department does not hold information on the number of graduates who are employed within six months.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure that ICBs effectively represent small and rural communities, in the context of the re-organisation of ICBs.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England has asked the integrated care boards (ICBs) to act primarily as strategic commissioners of health and care services and to reduce the duplication of responsibilities within the health and care structure. ICBs are responsible for commissioning health and care services for every person within their locality, including people from small and rural communities. We expect ICBs to continue delivering on all of their statutory responsibilities for all of their residents, including those from small and rural communities.
Asked by: Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what support they are providing for research and development into new diagnostic technologies for dementia, including blood-based biomarker tests.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Government responsibility for delivering dementia research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation.
The Government’s Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme has invested £13 million into a range of biomarker innovation projects which include a broad range of biomarker technologies, ranging from an artificial intelligence tool designed to improve the accuracy of blood tests for dementia, to using retinal scans to detect early-onset dementia decades before symptoms. Some of these innovations could support improved diagnosis in the future, if validated for clinical use.
Alongside Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the People’s Postcode Lottery, the NIHR is funding the Blood Biomarker Challenge which seeks to produce the clinical and economic data that could make the case for the use of a blood test in the National Health Service to support diagnosis of dementia.
The NIHR has also invested nearly £11 million of funding to develop new digital approaches for the timely detection and diagnosis of dementia. Funded projects include a range of innovative tests such as spatial awareness, image recognition, hearing tests, and monitoring sleep disturbances.
The UK Dementia Research Institute, primarily funded by the Government, aims to increase our basic scientific understanding of dementia and its causes, unlocking pathways to developing ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat the condition. The NIHR is investing £20 million in the UK Dementia Research Institute over four years to enable discoveries to be taken out of the laboratory and into the lives of people that need them.
The NIHR continues to welcome funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including dementia. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.
Welcoming applications on dementia to all NIHR programmes enables maximum flexibility both in terms of the amount of research funding a particular area can be awarded, and the type of research which can be funded.
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 increase the number of NHS dentists in North Shropshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
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 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 North Shropshire constituency, this is the NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB.
ICBs have been asked to start making extra urgent dental appointments available from April 2025. The NHS Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin ICB is expected to deliver 7,408 additional urgent dental appointments as part of the scheme.
ICBs have started to recruit posts through the Golden Hello scheme. This recruitment incentive will see up to 240 dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in those areas that need them most for three years. As of 6 June 2025, in England there were 93 dentists in post or appointed to post. A further 230 posts are currently being advertised.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of access to NHS-funded fertility treatment in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We expect integrated care boards to commission fertility services in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines. NICE is currently reviewing the fertility guidelines and will consider whether the current recommendations for access to National Health Service-funded treatment are still appropriate.
In the light of broader pressures on the National Health Service and on-going changes within NHS England, we have been looking again at achievable ambitions to improve access to fertility services and fairness for all affected couples.