Asked by: Earl of Dundee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the possible benefits to the national health and police services of encouraging good leadership and psychological wellbeing within those services.
Answered by Lord O'Shaughnessy
The Department considers good leadership and psychological wellbeing within the National Health Service in England is essential to delivering excellent patient care. This is the responsibility of each individual NHS organisation.
Good leadership is required at every level of the NHS. Trusts which the Care Quality Commission considers to have outstanding leadership are much more likely to be rated outstanding overall; effective, values driven leadership delivers high-quality care. The NHS Leadership Academy provides development and support to people working in the NHS and aims to improve leadership behaviours and skills across the service.
In respect of psychological wellbeing, NHS England is leading an initiative to improve the overall health and wellbeing of NHS staff which includes, for example, access to mental health talking therapies. They have also made available Commissioning for Quality and Innovation incentive payments to encourage trusts to improve the physical and mental health support provided to their staff.
The Department continues to commission NHS Employers to support the NHS in improving staff health and wellbeing through advice, guidance and good practice including, for example, their online-only How are you feeling NHS? Toolkit which should help staff check their own emotional wellbeing or speak to and support colleagues with theirs.
The Department has not made an assessment of leadership and wellbeing in the police service.
Asked by: Earl of Dundee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of current progress in treating age-related macular degeneration, what levels of improved funding they will provide to enable hospital eye services to meet demand.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
Hospital services for ophthalmic conditions are funded from local National Health Service commissioners’ general recurrent revenue allocations, in common with most other elements of health care. General allocations are not attributed to specific services centrally. Individual commissioners decide the distribution of resources, after taking account of local and national priorities.
Asked by: Earl of Dundee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the incidence of macular degeneration in the elderly, what plans they have to encourage further research into the disease.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
Investment in eye-related research by the Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has more than tripled from £7 million in 2010-11, to £22 million in 2015-16. This investment includes a wide range of research relating to age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Current investment in AMD research through NIHR programmes includes:
- a £2.2 million trial of stereotactic radiotherapy for wet AMD;
- a £2.2 million study of early detection of neo-vascular AMD; and
- a £0.9 million study of the efficacy of the telescopic mirror implant for AMD.
The NIHR also funds AMD research through infrastructure, including the NIHR biomedical research centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and University College London. Current funding for this centre ends in March 2017 and the NIHR has recently awarded the centre a total of £19 million over five years from April 2017.
The usual practice of the NIHR is not to ring-fence funds for expenditure on particular topics - research proposals in all areas compete for the funding available. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including AMD. 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. In all disease areas, the amount of NIHR funding depends on the volume and quality of scientific activity.
Asked by: Earl of Dundee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to co-operate with institutions and other governments to reduce alcohol and drug abuse internationally.
Answered by Earl Howe - Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
We recognise the importance of international cooperation in preventing alcohol and drug misuse effectively.
We continue to work with international partners, the United Nations, the European Union and through the British-Irish Council to promote the lessons the United Kingdom has learnt from its effective drugs strategy, and the benefits of a balanced, evidence based response within the international drug control conventions.
The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union recognises that Member States have the prime responsibility for public health, including preventing and reducing harm from alcohol, while the EU has a role to support Member States in this function. Discussions are currently taking place with Member States and the European Commission to develop:
- A new EU Alcohol Action Plan on youth drinking and binge drinking to run from 2014 to 2016 within the current EU Alcohol Strategy; and
- ideas for a new EU Alcohol Strategy.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a leading role in further building the evidence base, the development of policy tools and the establishment and maintenance of a global information system on alcohol and health as set out in the WHO global alcohol strategy.
The WHO UK Alcohol Focal Point which represents the UK, including the Devolved Administrations, is chair of the 53 European Alcohol Focal Points and sits on the WHO Global Co-ordinating Council for delivery of the global alcohol strategy.
Asked by: Earl of Dundee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their current level of funding of charities and institutions that seek to reduce alcohol and drug abuse in the United Kingdom.
Answered by Earl Howe - Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
The Innovation Excellence & Strategic Development Fund (IESD) provides funding from one to three years to support proposals in the health and care field.
A total of £658,902 has been awarded by the Department's IESD Fund in 2014-15 to organisations seeking to reduce alcohol and/or drug misuse. This amount is in respect of seven separate projects. The scope of the activity of these projects and the IESD Fund in general is within England only. The main responsibility for funding of services reducing alcohol and drug misuse is for local authorities. The Department does not hold detailed information on local funding.
A significant proportion of alcohol and drug treatment services is provided by charities and voluntary organisations and is funded by local authorities though the public health grant.
Asked by: Earl of Dundee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of people currently damaged by alcohol and drug abuse in the United Kingdom.
Answered by Earl Howe - Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
The United Kingdom Drug Policy Commission collect data on the numbers affected by drug addiction and publish their findings in their report Supporting the Supporters: families of drug misusers 2009. The findings estimate that nearly 1.5 million people are affected by drug addiction in their families, mostly in poor communities.
Estimates in the Office of National Statistics report ‘Deaths Related to Drug Poisoning in England and Wales, 2012 and Alcohol-related deaths in the UK, registered in 2012' showed that there were 1,496 drug misuse deaths in England.
In England, data on the number of adults who report some signs of drug or alcohol dependence is published by theHealth and Social Care Information Centre, in the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity in England, 2007 report. The report includes information on rates of dependency and access to treatments. This data will be updated in 2014 and will be available in 2017.
The Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University, published on 25 March, ‘Updating England-specific Alcohol-attributable Fractions', with revised estimates for England showing that over 21,000 people died in 2010 and that over 900,000 people were admitted to hospital in 2010-11 for alcohol-related causes.
Public health prevention, treatment and care in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a matter for those Devolved Administrations. Each country maintains its own information. For example:
- In 2012-13 there were 5,683 drug related discharges from a general acute hospital in Scotland (a European age-sex-standardised rate (EASR) of 107 discharges per 100,000 population). The National Records of Scotland reported that there were 581 drug related deaths in 2012 in Scotland.
- In 2012-13 there were 35,926 alcohol related discharges from a general acute hospital in Scotland (a European age-sex-standardised rate (EASR) of 693 discharges per 100,000 population).
- There were 25,000 referrals for drug and alcohol misuse recorded in 2012 -13 on the Welsh National Database for Substance Misuse.
- Data on the number of drug - related deaths in Northern Ireland is collected by the General Register Office and published in their annual report. The most recent estimates show that there were 110 drug related deaths in 2012.
- Data on the number of drug and alcohol – related hospital admissions is collected by the Hospital Inpatient System in Northern Ireland. The most recent estimates show that there were 15,701 drug and alcohol admissions to hospitals in Northern Ireland.
Data may not be comparable across the UK in all cases.