Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to prepare for another global pandemic.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ensuring the United Kingdom is prepared for a future pandemic is a top priority for the Government, and we are embedding lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic in our approach to pandemic preparedness. We aim to have flexible, adaptable, and scalable capabilities that can respond to any infectious disease or other threat, rather than relying on plans for specific threats.
The Government is committed to learning the lessons from the UK COVID-19 Inquiry to protect and prepare us for the future. On 16 January 2025, the Government published its response to the inquiry’s module one report on resilience and preparedness. A copy of the response is attached. The Department has committed, as part of this response, to publishing a new pandemic preparedness strategy that will show how we are embedding our new approach to pandemic preparedness.
In the 2024 Autumn budget, my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced that £460 million of investment has been allocated to strengthen the UK’s pandemic preparedness and health protection, including replenishing personal protective equipment, vaccine, and medicines stockpiles.
In autumn 2025, the Department and the UK Health Security Agency conducted Exercise Pegasus, a national exercise on the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic. It tested our ability to respond to a pandemic, involving all regions and nations of the UK and thousands of participants. The exercise has provided valuable experience which is being used to inform our strategy and planning. The Government has committed to communicating the findings through the post-exercise report this winter.
An established clinical countermeasures programme is a core component of our pandemic preparedness and set of response capabilities. These countermeasures include personal protective equipment and hygiene consumables, as well as vaccines and therapeutics, such as influenza antivirals and antibiotics.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - 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 12 September (HL10050), what steps they are taking to accelerate the process to bring wounded children from Gaza to the United Kingdom.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government continues to work to evacuate some of the critically ill and injured children from Gaza. They will receive specialist treatment in National Health Service hospitals across the United Kingdom.
I refer the noble Lord to my Written Statement HLWS899 from 2 September 2025, available on the Parliament.UK website, which sets out the Government’s medical evacuation process from Gaza
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what provision will be made for wounded children with no surviving family in Gaza who require urgent medical care to be brought to the United Kingdom for medical treatment.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is working urgently to get some of the critically ill and injured children medically evacuated from Gaza. The first patients are expected to arrive in the United Kingdom in the coming weeks.
Children will only be transferred to the UK where it is clinically safe to do so and in the interests of each individual patient and where there is capacity within the National Health Service to treat them. They will be accompanied by their immediate family which means their parents, and siblings aged under 18 years old. Where both parents are deceased, they must be accompanied by a legal guardian. We will not be evacuating unaccompanied children.
It is too early to say how long this process will run for and thus the number of children we expect to be evacuated.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many wounded children from Gaza they will bring to the United Kingdom for medical treatment; and whether they plan to increase this number.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is working urgently to get some of the critically ill and injured children medically evacuated from Gaza. The first patients are expected to arrive in the United Kingdom in the coming weeks.
Children will only be transferred to the UK where it is clinically safe to do so and in the interests of each individual patient and where there is capacity within the National Health Service to treat them. They will be accompanied by their immediate family which means their parents, and siblings aged under 18 years old. Where both parents are deceased, they must be accompanied by a legal guardian. We will not be evacuating unaccompanied children.
It is too early to say how long this process will run for and thus the number of children we expect to be evacuated.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to accelerate the process to bring wounded children from Gaza to the United Kingdom.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is working urgently to get some of the critically ill and injured children medically evacuated from Gaza. The first patients are expected to arrive in the United Kingdom in the coming weeks.
Children will only be transferred to the UK where it is clinically safe to do so and in the interests of each individual patient and where there is capacity within the National Health Service to treat them. They will be accompanied by their immediate family which means their parents, and siblings aged under 18 years old. Where both parents are deceased, they must be accompanied by a legal guardian. We will not be evacuating unaccompanied children.
It is too early to say how long this process will run for and thus the number of children we expect to be evacuated.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to improve access to medical care and vaccinations for people who are experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises the importance of reducing barriers to healthcare services for those experiencing homelessness, including those in temporary accommodation.
We are committed to promoting high vaccine uptake for eligible cohorts across the vaccination programmes available on the National Health Service. General practices (GPs) offer relevant opportunistic catch-up vaccinations when anyone visits their GP for any reason. Primary and community care providers also have knowledge of, and have developed relationships with their local communities, making them optimally located to undertake outreach into underserved cohorts, such as the use of pop-up clinics and mobile units.
Local health systems are encouraged to use their access and inequality funding to target those who are at greater risk of morbidity, mortality, and hospitalisation, including those who are experiencing homelessness. Previously used to improve the offer of the COVID-19 vaccine, access and inequality funding can now be used to promote other vaccines, including flu, shingles, pneumococcal polysaccharide, and respiratory syncytial virus.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to invest in health prevention in the coming years to help lesson demands on services through earlier intervention and education.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
One of the Government’s five missions is to ‘build an NHS fit for the future’, with a greater emphasis on prevention, to support people in living longer and healthier lives.
This will involve working across the Government to tackle the underlying determinants of preventable ill health and giving people the information and support they need to make healthy choices. It also means shifting the National Health Service away from a model geared towards late diagnosis and treatment, to a model focused on prevention, with more services delivered in local communities. We will intervene earlier in life to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history, giving every child a healthy start in life. Our future funding plans will be confirmed as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the success of integrated care boards.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England holds integrated care boards (ICBs) and National Health Service providers to account for the delivery of national priorities and statutory functions, and oversees them via the NHS oversight framework. NHS England has a legal duty to annually assess the performance of each integrated care board, in respect of each financial year, and publish a summary of its findings. Annual assessments for the financial year 2023/24 have been completed and NHS England will summarise the outcomes of all annual assessments and publish a report.
In addition, the Government published Professor Lord Darzi’s independent investigation of the NHS in England on 12 September 2024, which includes an assessment of the progress of and challenges facing ICBs. The Government has committed to the development of a new 10 Year Health Plan which will build on the findings of the report published by Professor Lord Darzi.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Markham on 11 May (HL Deb col 1935), whether they intend to recruit more paramedics to support increased capacity for ambulances.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Additional ambulance service capacity will largely be delivered through more crew hours on the road and through an increase in clinical capacity in control rooms. The number of National Health Service ambulance staff and support staff has increased by over 40% since 2010.
Asked by: Lord Roberts of Llandudno (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Markham on 11 May (HL Deb, col 1935), whether nurse recruitment will be part of the long-term workforce plan for the NHS.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government has committed to publishing the Long Term Workforce Plan shortly. This will include projections for the number of doctors, nurses and other professionals that will be needed in 5, 10 and 15 years’ time, taking full account of improvements in retention and productivity. The plan will help ensure that we have the right numbers of staff, with the right skills to transform and deliver high quality services fit for the future.