Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve access to infant formula for families who need it but are finding that rising costs are making it unaffordable.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are committed to promoting a healthy diet for children and providing support to families who need it the most through our Healthy Start scheme, which can be used towards the cost of infant formula. In April 2021, the value of Healthy Start rose from £3.10 to £4.25 per week, providing additional support to pregnant women and families on lower incomes to make healthy food choices. Children aged under one year old receive £8.50 in total per week, a rise from £6.20 a week.
Infant formula legislation under the Retained Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/127 sets robust nutritional and compositional standards to ensure that all infant formulas, including cheaper options, provide all the nutrients a healthy baby needs.
The Government launched the Household Support Fund in 2021 which was distributed by councils in England to directly help vulnerable households meet daily needs such as food, clothing, and utilities. The Government announced an extension of the fund to March 2024, which means since 2021 the fund has made £2.5 billion available to families most in need of support.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have made to address concerns in the social care sector about the closure of care homes caused by the loss of staff from overseas as a result of restrictions on staff bringing their families to the UK.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the importance of international recruitment to ensure we have sufficient supply of care workers and senior care workers. This is why the Government decided to add care workers to the Shortage Occupation List in February 2022, in response to unprecedented workforce pressures.
On 4 December 2023, the Secretary of State for the Home Department announced a five-point plan to curb legal net migration, including removing the right for care workers and senior care workers to bring dependants to the United Kingdom and restricting access to the route to employers who are regulated by the Care Quality Commission. The Secretary of State for the Home Department has committed to put estimates of the impact of these announcements in the House of Commons Library. This will be set out in due course.
The Government is committed to building a sustainable adult social care workforce. As part of this, international recruitment has bolstered the workforce with 101,000 out of country visa grants for care workers and senior care workers to the year ending September 2023. While at home, we are backing domestic recruitment with our National Recruitment Campaign, working with the Department for Work and Pensions to promote adult social care careers, and funding sector partner to support employers and commissioners to improve recruitment and retention.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many refugees from Afghanistan have been registered with the NHS; and how many have been provided with access to (1) a GP, and (2) maternal, (3) dental, and (4) mental health, services, within the past year.
Answered by Lord Kamall
We do not hold the data in the format requested. Clinical systems do not record whether individuals have been resettled through an Afghan resettlement scheme.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to establish regional telephone hotlines for the public to use to ask questions related to COVID-19 vaccines.
Answered by Lord Bethell
There are no plans to establish regional telephone hotlines.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to optimise vaccination protocols for older adults.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government’s ‘Coronavirus: action plan: A guide to what you can expect across the UK’ has stated that everyone should ensure themselves and their families vaccinations are up to date, as this will help to reduce any pressure on the National Health Service from vaccine preventable diseases.
In the interest of optimising vaccination protocols, Public Health England recently worked with NHS England and NHS Improvement to generate national news coverage to inform people that the NHS immunisations are still available. Resources such as posters have been circulated across the health system to help disseminate this message.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support studies which (1) include non-hospitalised individuals, and (2) are of sufficient scale to be valid, to determine the ages at which critical health changes in response to COVID-19 occur.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Department, through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and UK Research and Innovation, have launched a £20 million joint research call to fund ambitious and comprehensive research to understand and address the longer term physical and mental health effects of COVID-19 in non-hospitalised individuals. The aim is to support two or three large consortia and a number of extensions to existing studies. These studies will be robust and of sufficient scale to include analysis of age and other factors.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support studies (1) in a community setting, and (2) that extend into the convalescent period, to establish factors that affect the duration of effective immunity to COVID-19.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are jointly funding the United Kingdom Coronavirus Immunology Consortium with £6.5 million, which will address key research themes on immunity to COVID-19 including cross reactivity with seasonal coronaviruses.
Other relevant NIHR-UKRI funded studies include the STORY study to understand the severity of COVID-19 disease in children and evaluate antibody responses; Virus Watch looking at household transmission; and the INSTINCT study investigating the epidemiology and immunology of COVID-19 infection in households.
The NIHR’s Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections is also looking at the size and longevity of the immune response.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support studies investigating the effect of (1) co-infection, and (2) vaccination against other pathogens, on COVID-19 immunity.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are jointly funding the United Kingdom Coronavirus Immunology Consortium with £6.5 million, which will address key research themes on immunity to COVID-19 including cross reactivity with seasonal coronaviruses.
Other relevant NIHR-UKRI funded studies include the STORY study to understand the severity of COVID-19 disease in children and evaluate antibody responses; Virus Watch looking at household transmission; and the INSTINCT study investigating the epidemiology and immunology of COVID-19 infection in households.
The NIHR’s Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections is also looking at the size and longevity of the immune response.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the level of demand for flu jabs, and (2) reports that pharmacies and GPs have not had sufficient stock to meet demand; and what steps they are taking to ensure that pharmacies and GPs are supplied with enough vaccines to meet community need.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Overall, there are sufficient vaccine for up to 30 million people to be vaccinated in England this winter. We have seen huge early demand for vaccinations and latest figures show that uptake is higher for all cohorts compared to last year.
General practitioners, community pharmacies, and trusts are directly responsible for ordering flu vaccine from suppliers which are used to deliver the national flu programme to adults, with deliveries phased through the season.
Asked by: Baroness Goudie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their announcement on 24 July that the “most comprehensive flu programme in UK history will be rolled out this winter”, what steps they took to ensure that a supply of flu vaccines would be available; and what assessment they have made of the reported shortage of such vaccines for autumn 2020.
Answered by Lord Bethell
There is no national shortage of the flu vaccine. We have sufficient vaccine for up to 30 million people to be vaccinated in England this winter.
General practitioners and pharmacists are directly responsible for ordering flu vaccine from suppliers which are used to deliver the national flu programme to adults, with deliveries phased through the season.
In addition, the Department has procured additional doses of seasonal flu vaccine to ensure more flu vaccines are available from November.