Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the next Spending Review will include plans to review the level of investment in health research received by northern institutions.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
The Spending Review will consider all public investments in the round.
Research funding, including Medical Research Council funding, is allocated following nation-wide competitive and academic peer review processes, where scientific excellence is the core assessment criteria.
Since 2016, Government has committed an additional £7bn for R&D by 2021-22 – the largest increase for 40 years, which supports the government target of increasing economy-wide R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. To support innovation-led growth across the whole of the UK, Autumn Budget 2018 backed local initiatives to nurture R&D strengths by doubling the Strength in Places Fund to £235m.
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how the new NHS funding settlement will be spent to takcle health inequalities between the north and south of England.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
NHS England sets clinical commissioning group funding allocations.
NHS England has committed to ensuring a higher share of funding goes towards geographies with high health inequalities. This funding is estimated to be worth over £1 billion by 2023/24.
The NHS Long Term Plan sets out a number of commitments for reducing health inequalities and NHS England will continue to target a higher share of funding towards geographies with high health inequalities.
The National Implementation Framework, to be published in the spring, will provide further information on how the Long Term Plan will be implemented. Additional details, based on local health system five-year plans, will be brought together in a detailed national implementation plan in the autumn. Work will continue with key partners and stakeholders as we support the National Health Service to deliver the commitments set out in the Long Term Plan.
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
What assessment he has made of the effect of changes in the number of firefighters on fire service capacity to respond to emergency calls.
Answered by Nick Hurd
Recent data show that the average total response time to primary fires has remained the same as last year, and for secondary fires has increased by 1 second since last year.
Total response times have risen gradually since 1994 but are now starting to stabilise.
Fire and rescue services have the resources they need to do their important work.
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many cases of (a) gout, (b) rickets, (c) cholera, (d) tuberculosis, (e) malnutrition, (f) whooping cough, (g) measles, (h) scurvy, (i) typhoid, (j) scarlet fever, (k) diphtheria, (l) mumps, and (m) vitamin D deficiency have been reported by each NHS Trust since 2015.
Answered by Steve Brine
Public Health England publishes data on the number of cases of cholera, tuberculosis, whooping cough, measles, typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria and mumps as part of the notifications of infectious diseases data. The data are reported by local authority. Annual data for 2015, 2016 and 2017 are available to view at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-annual-report
Annual data for 2018 will be published in June 2019.
NHS Digital has provided a breakdown of the number of cases of gout, rickets, cholera, malnutrition, scurvy and vitamin D deficiency recorded by hospital provider from 2015-16 to 2017-18. The attached table shows counts of finished admission episodes. Information has been provided for both primary diagnosis and primary or secondary diagnosis. These data only include cases where the diagnosis was treated in a hospital inpatient setting. This should not be described as a count of people as the same person may have been admitted on one or more occasion.
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions his Department has had with the Cabinet Office on potential reforms to the community pharmacy sector.
Answered by Steve Brine
As is customary, the Department regularly engages the Cabinet Office across a wide range of policy issues. Ongoing discussions continue between the Department and the Cabinet Office on the role of community pharmacy and the important contribution of pharmacy teams as outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan.
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to renegotiate the community pharmacy contractual framework; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department will be seeking to renegotiate the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework. Community pharmacies play a vital role within our health and care system and the Department remains committed to working closely with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee to better utilise the reach and skill set of pharmacy teams.
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 82 of the NHS Long Term Plan, what specific reforms to reimbursement and supply arrangements for community pharmacy his Department is considering.
Answered by Steve Brine
As outlined in the published final package of, ‘Community Pharmacy in 2016/17 and beyond’1, the Government is committed to pursuing a number of reimbursement reforms and taking steps to improve the prescription ordering journey to maximise patient choice and convenience.
The reimbursement reforms include:
- ‘non Part VIII’ products, i.e. products with no reimbursement price listed in Part VIII of the Drug Tariff;
- changes to Category M for certain generic medicines to better reflect their market price;
- changes to the margin survey to account for multiple suppliers for Non Part VIII products and Category C products;
- ‘splitting the discount’- to reflect that in general generic medicines have increased margin over brands; and
- changes to the way Category A prices are set.
The Government has also recently committed to reforming reimbursement arrangements for specials.
Note:
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 29 October 2018 to Question 181567, to list (a) the distance selling pharmacies used in the calculation provided in that Answer, (b) the average number of items dispensed each month for each in 2017/18 and (c) the average fee earned per prescription item for each in 2017-18.
Answered by Steve Brine
The list of distance selling pharmacies used in that calculation is in the attached table alongside their average number of prescription items in 2017/18. It would prejudice companies’ commercial interest to disclose the average fee per prescription item for each individual contractor and for this reason this information is provided as a range between £1.25 and £23.74.
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 29 October 2018 to Question 181567, what the average fee per prescription item is including the retained medicine margin for (a) a pharmacy which dispensed an average mean number of prescription items in 2017-18, (b) a pharmacy which dispensed the highest number of prescription items in 2017-18, (c) a pharmacy which dispensed the lowest number of prescription items in 2017-18 and (d) a pharmacy which is in the bottom quartile of all pharmacies for the number of prescription items it dispensed in 2017-18.
Answered by Steve Brine
The following table shows the average fee relating to essential services per prescription item for pharmacies with different levels of dispensing activity for the period 2017/18 and also includes medicine margin.
| Average fee per prescription item including margin |
Pharmacy with mean number of prescription items | £2.37 |
Pharmacy with highest number of prescription items | £2.10 |
Pharmacy with lowest number of prescription items | £2.07 |
Pharmacy with lowest quartile number of prescription items | £2.57 |
We have calculated total fees as the sum of all essential service fees, including establishment payments and quality payments. It excludes any advanced service fees as these are payments for activity not related to dispensing. Any funding received via retained medicine margin, and any payments relating to the Pharmacy Access Scheme have similarly been excluded from this analysis and so would need to be separately considered.
The medicine margin retained by individual pharmacy contractors is not known, therefore it can only be calculated by using the number of pharmacy contractors and the total medicine margin as per the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (which in 2017/18 was £800 million).
Asked by: Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to offer financial support to manufacturers of general sales list medicines for the stockpiling of medicines in preparation for the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
On 23 August 2018 the Department wrote to all pharmaceutical companies that supply the United Kingdom with pharmacy (P) or prescription-only medicines (POM) from, or via, the European Union/European Economic Area (EEA), asking them to ensure they have a minimum of six weeks’ additional supply in the UK, over and above their business as usual operational buffer stocks, by 29 March 2019 in the event of a no deal EU Exit.
Over-the-counter ‘General Sales List’ (GSL) medicines are not included in the Department’s medicines supply contingency programme. GSLs are not considered in-scope for the programme as there are multiple alternatives available should a single GSL medicine be subject to a short-term supply disruption.
The Department is currently considering how best it may support pharmaceutical companies as part of its medicine supply contingency programme. Part of this support will include funding to provide additional capacity for the storage of P and POM medicines in the UK. A process to apply for such funding has been undertaken in recent weeks and contract agreements are imminent.