Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure greater collaboration between adult social care and the NHS.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Greater collaboration between adult social care and the National Health Service is a priority for the Government. Adult social care is a central part of our commitment to developing a Neighbourhood Health Service that shifts care from hospitals to communities, with more personalised, proactive, and joined-up health and care services that help people stay independent for as long as possible. In 2025/26, approximately £9 billion is being invested through the Better Care Fund to enable NHS bodies and local authorities to pool budgets and deliver joined-up care.
Starting in the financial year 2026/27, we will reform the Better Care Fund. This reform will provide a sharper focus on ensuring consistent joint NHS and local authority funding for those services that are essential for integrated health and social care, such as hospital discharge, intermediate care, rehabilitation and reablement. We will set out further details in due course.
We also provide improvement support to local systems to help them strengthen the delivery of integrated health and social care. This includes the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme and also work with the Local Government Association to deliver targeted and universal support to local systems through the Better Care Fund Support Fund. Information on these can be found respectively on the Neighbourhood Health and the Local Government Association websites.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they are taking to extend independent prescribing responsibilities to occupational therapists.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We support the expansion of non-medical professional groups being able to use legal mechanisms to prescribe, supply, and administer medicines to patients where it is safe to do so. There is a robust process in place for making such changes to ensure they are safe and beneficial for patients.
We are considering requests for the extension of existing medicines responsibilities and recently concluded a consultation on proposals to extend the medicines responsibilities of four professions. Further information can be found on the GOV.UK website.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will publish (1) the NHS workforce plan, and (2) the social care workforce plan.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government will publish the 10 Year Workforce Plan in spring 2026.
This plan will set out action to create an NHS workforce able to deliver the transformed service set out in the 10-Year Health Plan. It is important we do this in a robust and joined up way. We are therefore engaging extensively with partners to ensure this plan delivers for staff and patients.
Decisions regarding any potential publication for social care remain under consideration and no final position has been reached.
The Department is supporting the Adult Social Care workforce by improving terms and conditions through introducing a new Fair Pay Agreement, and supporting career development and progression by implementing the first ever career structure and investing up to £12 million in training and qualifications.
Baroness Casey’s independent commission into adult social care is underway as part of our critical first steps towards delivering a National Care Service. The Terms of Reference have been designed to be sufficiently broad to enable Baroness Casey to independently consider how to build a social care system, and workforce, fit for the future.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many prisoners are (1) eligible for support, and (2) receiving support, under section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The eligibility criteria for Section 117 applies to those who have been discharged from hospital following detention under the Mental Health Act, including those who have been remitted to prison. This is to help meet their needs and reduce the risk of their mental health condition worsening, which could lead to another hospital admission. Where prisoners are remitted back to prison, their right to receive Section 117 aftercare should be dealt with in the same way as it would be in the community, apart from any provisions which do not apply in custodial settings, such as direct payments and choice of accommodation. We do not hold centralised data on the number of prisoners receiving support under Section 117.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to increase the availability of comprehensive palliative care across England.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications. The statutory guidance states that ICBs must work to ensure that there is sufficient provision of palliative care and end of life care services to meet the needs of their local populations.
NHS England has also developed a palliative care and end of life care dashboard, which brings together all relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative care and end of life care needs of their local population.
The Department and NHS England are currently working at pace to develop plans on how best to improve the access, quality, and sustainability of all-age palliative care and end of life care in line with the 10-Year Health Plan. We will closely monitor the shift towards the strategic commissioning of palliative and end of life care services to ensure that services reduce variation in access and quality.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to support the establishment of more hospices in England.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has set out that integrated care boards (ICBs) are required to commission palliative care and end of life care services to meet the needs of their local populations, which can include hospice services available within the ICB catchment.
We are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. We are also committing £80 million for children’s and young people’s hospices over the next three financial years.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what national guidance they have issued to NHS trusts regarding the roles and responsibilities of nursing associate apprentices.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Apprenticeship standards set out the roles and responsibilities of an apprentice, and the skills, knowledge, and behaviours an apprentice will need to have learned by the end of their apprenticeship. The Nursing Associate Apprenticeship standard has been developed by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, in partnership with employers, and the Nursing and Midwifery Council. The standard is publicly available, including to all National Health Service trusts.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 23 July (HL9674), how they determine the allocation of (1) capital and (2) revenue funding to hospices in England.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The £100 million capital funding allocation for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England has been calculated by the Department, informed by Hospice UK, and is based on the care expenditure of each hospice.
Some of the organisations that are eligible for this capital funding for hospices in England are national charities, providing services across the United Kingdom. Therefore, a £5 million cap per organisation, of the total £100 million, was introduced to ensure that the Department was not indirectly funding hospice capital projects elsewhere in the UK, beyond England.
This is deemed the fairest model that can release funding to the hospice sector fastest, helping hospices to fully utilise the allocated funds, and doing so in a way which results in best value for money.
Regarding revenue funding for children’s hospices, the £26 million of revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26 will be disseminated by integrated care boards on behalf of NHS England. As in previous years, individual allocations of the revenue funding have been determined using a prevalence-based model, enabling allocations to reflect local population need.
This is in line with the NHS devolution and promotes a more consistent national approach, supporting commissioners in prioritising the palliative care and end of life care needs of their local population.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the NHS guidelines for the installation of defibrillators in (1) hospitals, and (2) community and primary care buildings.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England does not directly commission installation of defibrillators in hospitals, community care buildings or primary care buildings. ICBs have responsibility for locally commissioned services and estate management. However, NHS England does provide public guidance on installing a defibrillator via the NHS England website.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the proposed population base for each Neighbourhood Health Service in the 10 Year Health Plan.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10-Year Health Plan sets out our vision for a Neighbourhood Health Service that moves care closer to home. The Neighbourhood Health Service will embody our new preventative principle, that care should happen as locally as it can, digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, and only in a hospital if necessary.
Neighbourhood Health Services will bring together teams of professionals closer to people’s home, including nurses, doctors, social care workers, pharmacists, health visitors and more, to work together to provide comprehensive care in the community.
We expect neighbourhood teams and services to be designed in a way that meets the needs of local populations. Rather than applying a rigid, one-size fits all model, the population base for Neighbourhood Health Services is intentionally flexible and locally determined. The geography of a ‘neighbourhood’ will be determined locally by integrated care boards in partnership with their strategic partners, particularly local authorities.
The plan introduces two new contracts, including one to create multi-neighbourhood providers covering populations of approximately 250,000 people, that will unlock the advantages and efficiencies possible from greater scale working across all general practices and small neighbourhood providers in their footprint.
In the future, there will also be neighbourhood health plans drawn up by local government, the National Health Service, and its partners. The integrated care board will bring together these plans into a population health improvement plan for their footprint and use it to inform commissioning decisions.
To support the delivery and spread of neighbourhood health, we have launched the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP). The NNHIP will support systems across the country to test new ways of working, share learning, and scale what works.