Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the quality of surgical outcome data collected by NHS trusts; and what steps they are taking to support NHS trusts to use that data to improve patient safety.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP), is commissioned, managed, and developed by the Health Quality Improvement Partnership on behalf of NHS England, the Welsh Government, and other devolved administrations.
The programme currently consists of over 30 national clinical audits, registries, and databases as well as five clinical outcome review programmes.
The audit and registry topics include, for example, the national vascular registry, the national emergency laparotomy audit, and multiple cancer topics, all of which monitor a variety of clinical metrics including surgical outcomes.
The role of the NCAPOP is to detect unwarranted clinical variation and to feed this back to National Health Service trusts in an agile manner. Timely feedback to trusts enables them to make quick improvements to clinical practice. The NCAPOP work programme achieves this by making trust data available in near real time dynamic dashboards. The NCAPOP audits also operate a statistically rigorous outlier process with the aim of detecting negative trust outcomes. Outlier information is provided to the trust concerned, NHS England, and the Care Quality Commission.
The dashboard and outlier data can be used by trusts to influence quality governance, improve patient safety and reduce patient harm, and enable tailored clinical quality improvement programmes.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the use of AI forecasting tools by NHS trusts to manage demand for and waiting times in accident and emergency; and how the use of that AI is informing wider NHS digital transformation policy.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10-Year Health Plan was published on 3 July 2025 and sets out how the Government will ensure the National Health Service is fit for the future, and that artificial intelligence (AI) will play a fundamental role in this transformation. As part of the 10-Year Health Plan, the Government is supporting the use of AI-enabled appointment and scheduling tools to reduce the administrative burden on clinicians, with early trials showing an increase in productivity and clinician time saved.
An accident and emergency demand forecasting tool is now available to all NHS trusts and is already in use by 50 NHS organisations, helping them plan how many people are likely to need emergency care and treatment on any given day. While this tool does not schedule appointments specifically, it uses AI to predict emergency care demand, enabling trusts to plan staffing and resources more effectively and reduce pressure on services.
The tool forms part of a wider set of Government‑supported innovations in operational AI, which include technologies to streamline scheduling, automate administrative tasks, and enhance clinical workflows. These collectively aim to free up staff time, improve care quality, and reduce waiting times across the system.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, if any, to support the use of AI-enabled appointment and scheduling tools in the NHS.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10-Year Health Plan was published on 3 July 2025, which sets out how the Government will ensure the National Health Service is fit for the future, where artificial intelligence (AI) will play a fundamental role in this transformation. As part of the 10-Year Health Plan, the Government is supporting the use of AI-enabled appointment and scheduling tools to reduce the administrative burden on clinicians, with early trials showing an increase in productivity and clinician time saved.
An accident and emergency demand forecasting tool is now available to all NHS trusts and is already in use by 50 NHS organisations, helping them plan how many people are likely to need emergency care and treatment on any given day. While this tool does not schedule appointments specifically, it uses AI to predict emergency care demand, enabling trusts to plan staffing and resources more effectively and reduce pressure on services.
The NHS continues to fund both pilots and scaling of different software products that enable the use of AI in scheduling and managing secondary care appointments. Typically, these include the ability to predict Did Not Attends, to reschedule appointments at short notice, and improve utilisation of clinician time.
Work has begun to deliver the NHS’s Medium Term Planning Framework commitment that, from April 2026, the NHS will begin to move to a unified access model, using AI-assisted triage. This model should effectively guide patients to self-care or to the appropriate care setting, through a single user interface delivered via the NHS App but with an integrated telephony and in-person offering.
Further to this, features set to be developed through the NHS App will include the ability to book and manage remote or face-to-face appointments, receive personalised health advice, see when vaccines are up-to-date, and book appointments to get them organised, and find travel vaccine info.
Additionally, DrDoctor, an AI tool, had a three-year contract from 2021 to 2024 with the NHS AI Lab Award. It supports hospitals by providing AI guidance on overbooking as a more efficient and economical solution to increase NHS appointment capacity. This has been shown to free up clinician and administrative time, improve patient care and experience, and predict which patients are at the highest risk of missing an appointment with “Did Not Attend” DNA Prediction.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to mitigate the impact of resident doctors’ industrial action on NHS capacity and patient safety during the winter period.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government made a comprehensive offer to resident doctors in writing on 8 December 2025. The offer included a range of measures, such as introducing emergency legislation to prioritise United Kingdom medical graduates, increasing the number of training posts over the next three years, and measures which would put money back in doctors’ pockets. The offer was rejected by the British Medical Association (BMA) resident doctor membership on 15 December 2025.
As a result, planned strikes from 17 to 22 December went ahead, posing risks to the National Health Service during a critical period. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has taken all possible steps to prevent these strikes, including offering to extend the BMA’s mandate to allow further consultation.
The Department and the NHS are now focused on managing the combined challenges of flu and industrial action, having already vaccinated 17 million people, 170,000 more than last year, and 60,000 more NHS staff, and are working closely with frontline leaders to prepare for disruption.
An operational response, led by NHS England, is stood up to prepare and mitigate the impacts of strikes and to ensure patient safety is maintained. As has always been the case, employers will seek to mitigate the impact of any industrial action, including seeking to agree voluntary patient safety mitigations with trade unions at a local or national level with support from NHS England, and rearranging elective care, as appropriate, to maintain urgent services.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address the use of AI deepfake videos impersonating doctors to spread health misinformation on social media platforms.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) generated deepfake videos, particularly those impersonating medical professionals to disseminate health misinformation on social media platforms.
We urge the public to be conscious of where their information is coming from, and to prioritise health information published through official National Health Service and Department websites and their verified social media accounts. These channels are maintained to ensure the accuracy and reliability of clinically verified health advice, helping to safeguard the public from misleading or harmful content.
Furthermore, the Government is leveraging the Online Safety Act to require social media platforms to swiftly remove misleading and potentially harmful content, including AI deepfakes that spread health misinformation. We are actively working in partnership with Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications regulator, to ensure that online platforms comply with these requirements and uphold the highest standards of safety and information integrity. This collaborative approach aims to protect individuals from digital misinformation and maintain public trust in vital health communications.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the draft prostate cancer screening recommendation by the UK National Screening Committee.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We welcome the UK National Screening Committee’s (UK NSC) consideration of the evidence and robust consultation process on both the evidence and its draft recommendation. We are examining the evidence and arguments and will bring together those with differing views.
On 28 November 2025, the UK NSC opened a 12-week public consultation on a draft recommendation to:
After the consultation closes, in early 2026, the UK NSC will make a final recommendation on screening for prostate cancer. After receiving the final recommendation, ministers will consider whether to accept this and the next steps.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of pressures facing the NHS from a surge in flu cases and staff shortages this winter, in the context of maintaining safe patient care standards.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is clear that patients should expect and receive the highest standard of care throughout the year, including during the busy winter period.
We started earlier and have done more than ever to prepare for winter this year. We continue to monitor the impact of winter pressures on the National Health Service over the winter months, providing additional support to services across the country as needed.
Flu is a recurring pressure that the NHS faces every winter. There is particular risk of severe illness for older people, the very young, pregnant people, and those with certain underlying health conditions. The flu vaccine remains the best form of defense against influenza, particularly for the most vulnerable, and continues to be highly effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalisation.
Decisions about recruitment and resourcing are a matter for individual NHS employers, who manage this at a local level to ensure they have the staff they need to deliver safe and effective care.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that a third of UK citizens have used AI chatbots for emotional support or social interaction and the implications for safeguarding and mental health policy frameworks.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
No such assessment has been made. We recognise that people are facing unacceptably long waiting times to access mental health support. This is why we are transforming the current mental health system so people can access the right support, at the right time, in the right place.
Building on the 10-Year Health Plan, the NHS Medium Term Planning Framework, published on 24 October 2025, sets targets for integrated care boards in 2026/27 to improve quality and access to mental health services. This includes expanding NHS Talking Therapies and expanding coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges.
This builds on the significant progress we’ve made since July 2024 to hire almost 7,000 extra mental health workers. And by spring next year, over 900,000 children and young people will have access to a Mental Health Support team in schools and colleagues.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what safeguards and governance arrangements are in place for NHS patient data when accessed or processed by artificial intelligence systems.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England has issued guidance for the National Health Service, on the Transformation Directorate’s website, on the safe, lawful, and ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health and care settings. This has been reviewed by the Health and Care Information Governance Working Group, including the Information Commissioner’s Office and the National Data Guardian.
This framework helps ensure that AI innovations developed using NHS data benefit patients, support clinicians, and maintain public trust. Safeguards will include ensuring public transparency on the use of AI, ensuring systems are explainable, and that decisions remain under human oversight.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to assess the clinical safety and cost effectiveness of AI mental health tools funded and used by the NHS.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to ensuring that artificial intelligence (AI) tools used in mental health care within the National Health Service are clinically safe and deliver value for money. We are working with regulators such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and other partners to ensure all AI mental health tools deployed in the NHS meet the requirements of the United Kingdom’s regulatory system, to ensure these technologies are safe for use and cost-effective.
Additionally, NHS England applies the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria to evaluate the safety, security, and usability of digital health tools. Independent clinical evaluations and pilot studies are also undertaken prior to wider implementation of these technologies.
Through the AI in Health and Care Award, which ran from 2020 to 2024, the NHS AI Lab funded the testing and evaluation of two mental health technologies, Limbic Access and Wysa. As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, the NHS is working towards rolling out digital mental health tools. As part of this process, each technology is assessed not only for clinical safety but also for cost-effectiveness, ensuring that these innovations deliver measurable benefits and represent good value for the NHS and taxpayers.