Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the level of access to mental health services for people who have been recently released from prison.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Improving the physical and mental health of people in prison is a top priority for this Government.
It is recognised that there are large numbers of people in prison with mental ill health. When people do go to prison, they should receive the same standard and access to National Health Service healthcare and mental health treatments and care as people in the community. The Department has not made a formal assessment of levels of access and quality of mental health services for people in prison.
It is important to ensure that care started in prison can be continued on release into the community. Offenders should have the same access to healthcare services as everyone else once they are released from prison. Progress has been made in this area and general practitioner practices are now required to pre-register prisoners prior to their release.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the level of access to mental health services for people in prison.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Improving the physical and mental health of people in prison is a top priority for this Government.
It is recognised that there are large numbers of people in prison with mental ill health. When people do go to prison, they should receive the same standard and access to National Health Service healthcare and mental health treatments and care as people in the community. The Department has not made a formal assessment of levels of access and quality of mental health services for people in prison.
It is important to ensure that care started in prison can be continued on release into the community. Offenders should have the same access to healthcare services as everyone else once they are released from prison. Progress has been made in this area and general practitioner practices are now required to pre-register prisoners prior to their release.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the quality of mental health services available for people in prison.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Improving the physical and mental health of people in prison is a top priority for this Government.
It is recognised that there are large numbers of people in prison with mental ill health. When people do go to prison, they should receive the same standard and access to National Health Service healthcare and mental health treatments and care as people in the community. The Department has not made a formal assessment of levels of access and quality of mental health services for people in prison.
It is important to ensure that care started in prison can be continued on release into the community. Offenders should have the same access to healthcare services as everyone else once they are released from prison. Progress has been made in this area and general practitioner practices are now required to pre-register prisoners prior to their release.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the level of access to mental health services for people with degenerative illnesses.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
NHS England collects monthly data on the number of referrals made by general practitioners to memory assessment services for people with neurologically degenerative conditions such as dementia. In November 2017, we know that 2,892 referrals were made to mental health services specifically memory services.
People with degenerative illness can access psychological treatments for anxiety and depression which are available through local Improving Access to Psychological Treatment (IAPT) services. The Government recognises there is a need to better integrate mental and physical health services and has committed to delivering the recommendations in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health for an additional 600,000 people to have access to integrated evidence-based psychological therapies each year by 2020/21.
The expansion of IAPT services will be through IAPT –LTC (Long Term Conditions) services that are integrated into physical healthcare pathways, supporting people with comorbid physical and mental health conditions. The IAPT-LTC services will aim to ensure people with long-term physical health problems have the same access to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-recommended psychological therapies as other people and commissioners will be expected to have clear access criteria for IAPT-LTC services that are agreed with all relevant services. Many of these services will be co-located with primary and community care, with the aim of providing more convenient and tailored treatment.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to prevent Type 2 diabetes in children.
Answered by Steve Brine
There is a strong association between obesity and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. ‘Childhood Obesity: A Plan for Action’, launched in 2016, aims to prevent obesity in children and in doing so supports the prevention of Type 2 diabetes in young people.
The plan involves encouraging the food industry to cut the amount of sugar in products, as well as helping children to eat more healthily and stay active. Part of the scheme involves the sugar reduction and wider reformulation programme, which will help reduce the amount of sugar children consume.
In addition, Change4Life, Public Health England’s behaviour change social marketing campaign encourages families across England to ‘eat well and move more’.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he plans to reform mental health services for (a) prisoners and (b) those recently released from prison.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
There are commitments in NHS England’s “Next Steps for the Five Year Forward View” and the Strategic Direction for Health and Justice 2016-20 to “support the development of mental health, substance misuse and earlier crisis care for children, young people and adults in the criminal justice system” as well as “developing a new mental health specification in the adult secure and detained estate in 2017”.
To support these commitments, work is ongoing to design and test an optimum mental health service model for the prison estate.
Work is also being led by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health on behalf of NHS England, to develop a set of quality benchmarks for community mental health services. This is due for publication in 2018 and will comprise recommended standards for the provision of treatment and support along the journey from referral to recovery, for anyone in receipt of community based mental health services, including those who have been released from prison.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many former service men and women were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in each of the last five years.
Answered by David Mowat
This information is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS agencies have changed their name or merged in the last (a) 12 and (b) 24 months; and what the cost was to the public purse of such mergers and name changes.
Answered by Ben Gummer
No National Health Service arm’s length bodies have merged or changed their name in the last 24 months. As of 1 April 2016, Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA) have been working under a shared leadership and operating framework as NHS Improvement. However, Monitor and the TDA have not formally merged. They continue to operate in line with their current legal underpinnings as two separate entities. In order to ensure that all NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts have access to the same kinds of support and interventions there will be much more alignment between the two organisations so that they can deliver what patients and taxpayers have a right to expect. As at the end of March, the cost associated with the recruitment of NHS Improvement’s Chief Executive and designing and supporting NHS Improvement’s new structure and operating model has been £655,190. There may have been other costs associated with the alignment of the two organisations but these have been absorbed in their baseline funding allocations.
Asked by: Chris Evans (Labour (Co-op) - Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether any (a) external contractors and (b) consultancy companies engaged by his Department have charged more than the initial price agreed for their services since May 2010.
Answered by Dan Poulter
The Department does hold the information requested. Information for all contracts is however not held centrally and to provide a complete answer would require a review of each individual contract and invoice payment, and would result in disproportionate cost. Departmental expenditure with all suppliers is subject to rigorous procurement controls from initial formation of the contract to invoicing for services once they have been delivered.