Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent the exploitation of women in poorer countries involved in surrogacy.
Answered by Lord Collins of Highbury - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The UK does not support international surrogacy involving any form of exploitation and is committed to eradicating all forms of modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking in line with Sustainable Development Goal 8.7. Globally the UK is proud to defend and promote universal and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights. At the multilateral level, and through our diplomatic and Official Development Assistance partnerships, we advocate that all people have the right to make informed decisions about childbearing, including if, whether and when to have children. Family planning interventions, including surrogacy, must always be voluntary and rooted in a human rights-based approach.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to ban people from going abroad to obtain paid surrogacy in poorer countries.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has no plans to restrict international travel for surrogacy. We recognise that surrogacy is a complex and sensitive issue, but we do not support arrangements in which any party may be at risk of exploitation. We have issued guidance for those considering surrogacy overseas, clearly outlining the possible risks for individuals returning to the United Kingdom with a child born through an international arrangement.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they are taking to ensure that palliative care for seriously ill children is not dependent on where they live.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We want a society where every person receives high-quality, compassionate care from diagnosis through to the end of life. We know there are inequalities in access to high-quality palliative and end of life care, and we, alongside NHS England, are looking at how best to reduce these.
NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications, which outline areas for consideration when commissioning palliative and end of life care services and, within this, there is reference to improving equity of access and reducing inequity in outcomes and experiences. Additionally, NHS England has developed a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together all relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of their local population, enabling integrated care boards to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities, and ensure that funding is distributed fairly, based on prevalence.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what actions they are taking to reduce the use of electronic devices such as tablets and smartphones for preschool children and babies; and how they are alerting new parents of the possible dangers for preschool children and babies overusing these devices.
Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
Ofcom has duty to promote media literacy to help the public understand the nature and impact of where harmful content and online behaviour affects certain groups.
The Online Safety Act also requires user-to-user and search services likely to be accessed by children to risk assess their service and provide safety measures for child users of all age groups, including early years. In its draft child safety risk assessment guidance, Ofcom has identified age as a risk factor, listing 0-5 years as an age group for which it expects services to consider the age-related risks based on the developmental stage of the children.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the findings in the Care Quality Commission's 2024 Maternity Survey; and what plans they have to address those areas where the survey reported an increase in poor maternity experiences.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Care Quality Commission’s 2024 Maternity Survey indicates that women’s experiences of maternity services have mostly either remained similar to 2023, or have shown small levels of decline. Whilst there have been improvements to some areas of maternity and neonatal care provision, such as mental health support during pregnancy, we recognise that the survey shows that women are not always receiving the standard of care they should expect.
NHS England’s three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services continues to make progress in delivering important improvements for services. For example, all women who have given birth now receive a six-to-eight-week postnatal check-up, and Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Services now have full population coverage to support women with, or at risk of, mental health issues, with a range of treatments including support clinics, talking therapies, and pre-conception advice.
The Government recognises the need to go further to ensure that women get the maternity care they deserve, and will use the results of this survey to help inform its next steps on improving maternity and neonatal care.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to introduce league tables for NHS trusts; and if so, (1) what the league tables will be based on, and (2) what metrics will be taken into account.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are putting in place a robust package of reforms to help tackle the National Health Service crisis. There will be no more rewards for failure. This includes a comprehensive review of NHS performance across the entire country, with providers to be placed into a league table. This will be made public and regularly updated to ensure transparency for the public, and a clear basis for addressing failure. We expect this will include a range of metrics looking at both providers and systems, and further detail will be set out at the earliest opportunity.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to address health inequalities on the basis of gender, race, and economic class; what their key priorities are in doing so; and what steps they will take to measure success.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is dedicated to building a fairer, more equal society by addressing the structural inequalities that drive poor health outcomes, especially for disadvantaged groups.
Our Health Mission in England will focus on addressing the social determinants of health, with the goal of halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions.
We are committed to prioritising women’s health as we build a National Health Service fit for the future. We are also taking action on the range of conditions that particularly affect men, including heart disease, liver disease, and cancer.
The Government is also committed to closing the black and Asian maternal mortality gap. Recognising the need for health inequalities to be central to all policy making, our health inequalities work has a renewed focus to bring together policy experts to reduce racial inequalities across health.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many incidents of patient records or personal data being accessed without due cause have been recorded in the most recent year for which figures are available.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Health and care organisations are required to submit data breach reports within 72 hours of an incident. Data breach incidents are reported to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), who then investigate and decide what action to take. Notifiable breaches are those that are likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of the individual, referred to as the data subject. NHS England publishes the number of incidents reported through the Data Security and Protection Toolkit on its website. In 2023, 996 incidents were reported to the ICO, but not all of these would have involved patient details being accessed without due cause. The ICO publishes details on its website of incidents where it takes enforcement action.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that patient records and personal data are only accessible to those who need to view them, and to ensure connections between software systems in health facilities include suitable control measures for this risk.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
National IT systems must ensure that users can be identified correctly, and are given appropriate access. This is achieved using identity verification capabilities, including creating a national digital identity for each authorised user.
Each local National Health Service organisation which requires access to the national IT systems is required to set up its own local Registration Authority (RA) which consists of people and processes who are trained to create identities and grant access for their staff to the national IT systems. NHS England has published the RA Policy requirements with which every local NHS organisation that has an RA must comply. This reflects current best practice for identity and access management as informed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) guidance.
The RA Policy also allows non-NHS health and care organisations providing direct care to run their own RA service. RA hosting is subject to meeting requirements and assessment criteria, which are soon to be published.
The RA process includes the use of RA codes, assigned to professional users’ smartcards to give them access to the correct information within national IT systems.
The RA codes which are assigned for a specific user will allow that user to create and process referrals appropriately depending on their job role.
Local organisations which have an RA function are required to have an RA audit policy and conduct annual audits on NHS Smartcard usage as part of their RA governance. RA Managers (those responsible for administering the RA function within an organisation) must implement a process to run the RA reports on a regular basis.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent of racism and discrimination within the NHS; what steps NHS England are taking to collate data on this issue; and how they disseminate best practice to improve working culture within the NHS.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The National Health Service is one of the most diverse organisations in this country. As of September 2023, 27.3% of hospital and community health service staff reported an ethnic minority background. However, data shows that disabled staff, staff from ethnic minority background, and staff with other protected characteristics face a worse experience of working in the NHS when it comes to abuse, bullying and harassment, and career progression.
Since 2016, NHS England has published an annual Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) report. Implementation of the WRES is a requirement for NHS commissioners and NHS healthcare providers, including independent organisations through the NHS standard contract. The WRES enables NHS organisations to better understand how they are performing against nine indicators covering issues such as board representation, career progression, and bullying and harassment. They are required to develop action plans to progress and improve against the indicators.
In June 2023, NHS England published the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Improvement Plan that sets out targeted actions to address prejudice and discrimination in the NHS workforce. NHS England has also provided guidance to assist trusts and integrated care boards in adopting an improvement approach to the implementation of this plan. It is supported by a repository of good practice and a dashboard, to enable organisations to measure progress.