Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the real-terms, per-patient GP funding in (1) Cornwall, (2) the South West NHS region, (3) England, and (4) London in each year since 2000.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Spending on general practice (GP) services rose by just over a fifth in real terms between 2017/18 and the most recent data in 2021/22. More specifically it rose from £11.3 billion in 2017/18 to £13.5 billion in 2021/22, representing a 19% increase in real terms.
Payments to general practices are published by NHS Digital. The attached tables show the requested real-terms, per-patient GP funding figures from from 2014/15, which is the first year for which cilinical commissioning group summary figures are available; there is no data prior to 2013/14.
The tables summarise payments to GPs both in cash terms and adjusted for inflation. From 2020/21, payments are also made for primary care network-related activities. The final annual figures for inflation have been adjusted using the GDP deflator published by HM Treasury.
The figures attached are presented for payments per registered patient, as well as payments per weighted patient, where the weighting adjusts for differences in workload associated with age/sex, additional health needs, care home residents, list turnover, as well as areas costs and costs related to rurality. The figures include dispensing doctors related payments and the number of dispensing doctors in each area will therefore impact payment figures.
We have reported the health geography most closely fitting the request, with data availability changing over the years; for example, the data for 2022/23 is available at integrated care board (ICB) level but not at a sub-ICB level, while previous years’ data is available for NHS Kernow Clinical Commissioning Group.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the average waiting time for an ambulance (1) in the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, and (2) across all NHS trusts in England, in each year since 2000.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Ambulance response time standards were reformed following the recommendations of the Ambulance Response Programme in 2017, including the publication of average response times.
We recognise the pressures the ambulance service is facing which is why we published our Recovery Plan for Urgent and Emergency Care Services. The ambition is to deliver one of the fastest and longest sustained improvements in emergency waiting times in the National Health Service's history. We aim to reduce average Category 2 response times to 30 minutes this year with further improvements towards pre-pandemic levels next year.
Ambulance response times are recorded at an ambulance trust level. Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust is served by South West Ambulance Service. The following table shows the South West Ambulance Service average response time since the introduction of the standards in August 2017.
South West Ambulance Service average response times (hh:mm:ss)
Year | Category 1 mean | Category 2 mean | Category 3 mean | Category 4 mean |
2017/18 (August-March) | 00:09:42 | 00:33:22 | 01:15:30 | 02:00:33 |
2018/19 | 00:07:18 | 00:27:26 | 01:12:09 | 02:06:25 |
2019/20 | 00:07:03 | 00:28:38 | 01:17:17 | 01:33:56 |
2020/21 | 00:07:35 | 00:23:30 | 01:00:03 | 01:23:46 |
2021/22 | 00:10:20 | 1:01:57 | 02:44:01 | 02:53:39 |
2022/23 | 00:11:05 | 1:09:04 | 02:41:37 | 02:45:25 |
2023/24 (so far) | 00:09:27 | 00:40:40 | 01:46:15 | 02:02:26 |
The following table shows the National average ambulance response time since the introduction of the standards in August 2017.
Year | Category 1 mean | Category 2 mean | Category 3 mean | Category 4 mean |
2017/18 (August-March) | 00:08:23 | 00:25:51 | 01:04:36 | 01:30:32 |
2018/19 | 00:07:18 | 00:21:47 | 01:01:46 | 01:25:42 |
2019/20 | 00:07:18 | 00:23:50 | 01:11:04 | 01:26:09 |
2020/21 | 00:07:03 | 00:20:57 | 00:54:41 | 01:22:51 |
2021/22 | 00:08:39 | 00:41:18 | 02:13:39 | 03:07:10 |
2022/23 | 00:09:18 | 00:50:01 | 02:35:19 | 03:07:43 |
2023/24 (so far) | 00:08:25 | 00:34:25 | 01:57:07 | 02:24:33 |
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the average waiting time in accident and emergency (1) in the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, and (2) across all NHS trusts in England, in each year since 2000.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Official data on accident and emergency waiting times is collected and published by NHS England including the number and proportion of patient attendances that meet the national four-hour accident and emergency access standard and is published monthly. The latest published data from NHS England shows that the Royal Cornwall NHS Trust achieved 78.5% of patient attendances within the four-hour standard in October 2023.
Some information on median waiting time data is collected by NHS England, however this remains experimental data subject to quality issues and is not intended for official performance monitoring use.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the proportion of COVID-19 cases that are asymtomatic they applied to the forecasting models that were used to inform the decision to place England under national restrictions in March to address the COVID-19 pandemic; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency (SAGE) is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to support decisions by the Government. The SAGE subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational use their own estimates of metrics such as asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, or infection fatality rates. These are based on a wide range of available data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease.
In the reasonable worst-case planning scenario from late March, SAGE’s best estimate of the infection fatality ratio was approximately 1%, however this was highly age-dependent. Precise estimates of the case fatality ratio – the proportion of people with clinical symptoms who die – are much harder, as the proportion of cases who are asymptomatic is difficult to estimate. Due to the difficulty with ascertaining the proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic, modelling is based on estimates of the total number of infections in a population. At the time, the best estimate of the proportion of cases that were asymptomatic was 33%.
Estimates of mortality rates for those hospitalised were around 12%. However, again this was highly age-dependent, with 50% mortality in those hospitalised who require invasive ventilation.
SAGE’s estimate of the proportion of infections that required hospitalisation was 5% overall, but that this was also highly dependent on age. This reasonable worse-case planning scenario used an estimate for the number of patients requiring ventilation, mechanical or otherwise, of 30%. A copy of the SAGE paper Reasonable Worst-Case Planning Scenario – 29/03/2020 is attached.