Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of current mechanisms for identifying and responding to recurring patient safety failures across NHS trusts.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is committed to improving patient safety across the National Health Service and ensuring that the system identifies, responds to and learns from recurring safety failures. NHS trusts are subject to a range of regulatory and contractual requirements to identify patterns of harm, manage risks and take action to improve services.

The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework, which became a contractual requirement for all NHS trusts from 1 April 2024, has reformed how organisations respond to patient safety incidents. It supports a more proportionate, transparent and compassionate approach, focused on understanding how incidents happen, identifying local risks and priorities, and ensuring learning leads to improvement.

The Learn from Patient Safety Events service collects and analyses information on patient safety incidents across the NHS, with NHS England continuingly reviewing incidents to identify emerging or under-recognised risks. Where appropriate, these risks can be acted on through National Patient Safety Alerts, national guidance or work with partner organisations, such as the Care Quality Commission.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the resilience of NHS medicines supply chains following recent shortages including Creon, insulin, ADHD medicine and blood pressure treatments; and whether they have identified any other medicines considered at particular risk of future disruption.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

There are approximately 14,000 licensed medicines and the overwhelming majority are in good supply. Medicine supply chains are complex, global and highly regulated and there are several reasons why supply can be disrupted, many of which are not specific to the United Kingdom and outside of Government control. These include manufacturing difficulties, access to raw materials, sudden demand spikes, or distribution and regulatory issues.

The Department uses a sophisticated, multi-layered approach to monitor, assess, and respond to medicines at risk of future supply disruption. Intelligence is drawn from a wide range of sources, including our existing communication channels with our partners in the National Health Service, suppliers, industry, and international partners. In 2020, the Department developed a global risk register which draws on information on medicines licensed in the UK to map manufacturing touchpoints within the supply chain. It is used to help understand medicines supply chains vulnerability and risk.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether current NICE appraisal processes are sufficient responsive to emerging treatments for rare diseases and advanced therapies.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government recognises the importance of patients with rare diseases being able to access effective new medicines. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) assesses whether medicines should be funded by the National Health Service. Its process has been proven to be suitable for rare disease medicines, including advanced therapies, where companies work constructively with NICE and NHS England. Since March 2024, NICE has recommended 89% of the rare disease medicines it has appraised for some or all eligible patients.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what governance arrangements will oversee the development and implementation of the NHS single patient record; and what independent scrutiny will be applied.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The development and implementation of the Single Patient Record (SPR) will be overseen through the governance arrangements for the Transforming and Connecting Care (TCC) Programme. These provide accountability for design and delivery, with oversight from the Senior Responsible Officer, Programme Director and Programme Design Director. The Programme Board will provide overall governance, strategic leadership and decision-making authority.

Delivery will be overseen by the TCC Programme Delivery Group, which will focus on how and when programme outcomes are delivered. Design will be overseen by the TCC Programme Design Authority, which will assure what the programme is delivering, including coherence across products, architecture, clinical safety, cyber security, information governance, policy and transformation. SPR project-level governance will report into these.

Independent scrutiny will be provided through advisory and assurance routes, including the Clinical Advisory Group and the Data Transformation Check and Challenge Group. The programme also engages with external organisations and expert bodies as part of its governance and assurance arrangements, including participation by the National Cyber Security Centre in relevant design authority discussions to provide specialist cyber security expertise and challenge.

These advisory, assurance and external challenge mechanisms will support robust scrutiny throughout the design and implementation of the SPR, complemented by additional independent assurance commissioned at key points in the programme.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the additional funding needs of social care reform from (1) reallocation of existing resources, (2) additional service user contributions, or (3) new money to be allocated in future Budget settlements; and what approximate share of total funding each would provide.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

On 29 July, the Prime Minister set out his objectives to reform the social care system and brought forward the timetable for Baroness Casey’s commission to inform that reform programme. We will update Parliament in due course on the proposals resulting from that work, and we will continue working to build a political and public consensus behind those reforms.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will intend to confirm detailed plans for social care reform before the next general election, following the Prime Minister’s decision to fast-track Baroness Casey of Blackstock’s review of adult social care.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

On 29 July, the Prime Minister set out his objectives to reform the social care system and brought forward the timetable for Baroness Casey’s commission to inform that reform programme. We will update Parliament in due course on the proposals resulting from that work, and we will continue working to build a political and public consensus behind those reforms.

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