Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to make COVID-19 PCR tests free in order to ease the travel expense burden on families.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
We have no plans to provide free tests for international travel. Free National Health Service tests cannot be used for travel in order to preserve testing capacity and protect public health. We are committed to working with private testing providers to reduce the cost of testing. Since international travel testing requirements were introduced, the average cost of a day two polymerase chain reaction test has decreased to £45.
We have also reduced the cost of NHS Test and Trace tests for international arrivals from £88 to £68 for fully vaccinated arrivals and from £170 to £136 for two tests for arrivals who are not fully vaccinated. For United Kingdom residents or individuals with residency rights who would suffer severe financial hardship by paying the full cost of their managed quarantine or testing fees before they travel, hardship arrangements may be available.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what further steps they will take to ensure that pensioners' homes will not be sold to fund social care costs.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
The new £86,000 cap, in combination with the new higher capital limits, will mean that more people will be able to preserve more of their assets if they need care. The value of a person’s home is taken into consideration when determining how much they should pay for social care when they enter residential care and where a spouse or other eligible adult is no longer living in their home.
No-one will be forced to sell their home to pay for their care in their lifetime. Where people do need to access housing wealth to pay for care, individuals are able to take out a deferred agreement so that payments can be deducted from their estate after their care journey has ended.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to reduce the risk of social care staff leaving their jobs over the winter months.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
On 21 October 2021, the Department announced a new £162.5 million Workforce Recruitment and Retention fund to support local authorities working with providers to recruit and retain social care staff this winter.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many patients have been waiting for (1) heart, and (2) cancer, diagnostic tests for more than six weeks.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
This information is not available in the format requested.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to meet the long-term need for sustainable numbers of doctors within the NHS.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
We have commissioned Health Education England to develop a 15 year forward view of National Health Service workforce requirements. The report is expected to be published in spring 2022.
We have funded an additional 1,500 undergraduate medical school places each year for domestic students in England. This expansion was completed in September 2020 and has delivered five new medical schools in England.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to reduce ambulance wait times this winter.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
National Health Service ambulance trusts are being supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement to improve response times. This includes continuous monitoring and support through the National Ambulance Coordination Centre and an extra £55 million for ambulance trusts to increase staff numbers ahead of winter, helping them to recruit more 999 call handlers and clinicians to work in control rooms.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to tackle the problems with the (1) recruitment, and (2) retention, of social care staff.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
On 21 October 2021, the Department announced a new £162.5 million Workforce Recruitment and Retention fund to support local authorities working with providers to recruit and retain social care staff this winter. The next phase of the national adult social care recruitment campaign will be launched in early November and we are also working alongside the Department for Work and Pensions to promote adult social care careers in job centres. In addition, we will invest at least £500 million across three years in social care workforce professionalisation and development, wellbeing and mental health support, to improve retention of staff in the sector.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether new antivirals specially designed to tackle COVID-19 will be available from pharmacies in England.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
On 20 October 2021 the Department announced that we have secured 730,000 patient courses of two COVID-19 oral antiviral treatments for patients in the United Kingdom. However, these are awaiting the appropriate authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and are not yet available for patients to access.
The Antivirals Taskforce is working with NHS England and NHS Improvement, the UK Health Security Agency and the devolved administrations to deploy these antivirals should they receive appropriate authorisation. Further details will be announced in due course.