Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of the projects funded through the New Hospital Programme are under construction.
Answered by Will Quince
The New Hospital Programme continues to work closely with all schemes announced as part of the programme to ensure they deliver for patients, staff and communities.
We’re continuing to make progress on the New Hospital Programme, which is expected to be backed by over £20 billion of investment, with three schemes already open, two more opening this year and 21 in construction or with work begun to prepare the site.
The Programme will be releasing further funding across all schemes in the Programme in Cohorts 3, 4 and the RAAC schemes in the 2023/24 financial year to support business case development for enabling works.
By the end of next year, we expect more than 20 schemes to be underway or complete.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's press release of 15 August 2023 on £250 million to boost NHS capacity with 900 new beds, what baseline number was used to calculate the announcement of 5,000 additional beds as part of the permanent bed base for winter.
Answered by Will Quince
The number of National Health Service planned core general and acute beds in 2022/23 was 94,500. The 5,000 additional beds will take the core bed base to 99,500 this winter.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help tackle health inequalities.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Government is committed to its levelling up mission to narrow the gap in Healthy Life Expectancy by 2030 and increase Healthy Life Expectancy by five years by 2035. Our approach will continue to focus on supporting people to live healthier lives, helping the National Health Service and social care to provide the best treatment and care for patients and tackling health disparities through national and system interventions such as the NHS’s Core20PLUS5 programme.
On 24 January 2023, we announced our plan to publish the Major Conditions Strategy. This strategy will explore how we can tackle the key drivers of ill-health in England to improve healthy life expectancy, as well as reduce pressure on the NHS and reduce ill-health related labour market inactivity. The strategy will focus on six major groups of conditions, namely cancers, mental health, cardiovascular disease (including stroke and diabetes), dementia, chronic respiratory diseases, and musculoskeletal disorders, that account for approximately 60% of ill-health and early death in England.
We have published our initial report ‘Major Conditions Strategy: Case for change and our strategic framework’ which identifies the importance of tackling inequalities to improve health outcomes, and is available at the following link:
Our intention is to publish the Major Conditions Strategy in early 2024.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve patient access to primary care in (a) Liverpool, Walton and (b) England.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
We recognise that despite the hard work of general practice (GP) teams, some patients are still struggling to access care in a timely way. That is why we have published our Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care. The plan has two central ambitions to improve access, both nationwide and in Walton, Liverpool: firstly, to tackle the 8am rush and reduce the number of people struggling to contact their practice; and secondly, for patients to know on the day they contact their practice how their request will be managed.
We will achieve this by modernising telephone systems which can help practices to better match their capacity to patient demand, backed by £240 million in retargeted funding. All practices have now signed up to transition to new digital systems. The plan will empower patients to do more themselves, cutting bureaucracy for GPs and building capacity to deliver more appointments. We are investing at least £1.5 billion to create an additional 50 million GP appointments by 2024 by increasing and diversifying the workforce.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to mental health services in (a) Liverpool, Walton constituency and (b) England.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We remain committed to the aims of the NHS Long Term Plan, investing at least £2.3 billion of extra funding a year in expanding and transforming mental health services in England, including in Liverpool, Walton constituency.
This extra funding will enable an extra two million people to be treated by mental health services within the National Health Service by March 2024.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help increase staff (a) recruitment and (b) retention in the adult social care sector.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are investing at least £250 million over the next two years on workforce reforms, a key objective of which is to improve retention and turnover rates.
In July we announced the £570 million Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund -Workforce Fund to support increased adult social care capacity, improve market sustainability, and enable local authorities to make tangible improvements to adult social care services, with a particular focus on workforce pay. Local authorities can choose to use this funding to increase adult social care workforce and improve retention.
We are also supporting recruitment and retention by delivering our ongoing National Recruitment Campaign; working with the Department of Work and Pensions to promote adult social care careers to jobseekers; and supporting international recruitment.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on rolling out Community Diagnostic Centres.
Answered by Will Quince
£2.3 billion was awarded at the 2021 Spending Review to transform diagnostic services over the next three years. Most of this will help increase the number of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, expanding and protecting elective planned diagnostic services. The remainder of the funding will increase capacity for imaging, endoscopy as well as lung and mammography screening, and improve digital diagnostics.
As of September 2023, there are 121 CDCs currently operational that have delivered over five million additional tests since July 2021, including large, standard and hub models. This compares with over 92 CDCs being operational as of September 2022, having delivered over two million additional tests since July 2021. We are on track to meet the target of up to 160 CDCs by March 2025.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve healthcare for women in (a) Liverpool, Walton constituency and (b) England.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Women’s Health Strategy sets out how the Government is improving healthcare for women across England. Achievements since the launch of the strategy include appointing the first Women’s Health Ambassador for England; investing £25 million funding in the expansion of women’s health hubs to improve women’s access to services and to create efficiencies for the National Health Service; reducing the cost of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) through the launch of the HRT prescription pre-payment certificate; and creating a women’s health area on the NHS website to bring together women’s health content and create a first port of call for women seeking information.
Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning services that meet the health needs of their local population.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has had discussions with NHS trusts who (a) suspended or (b) paused pilots of Palantir Foundry on that company's suitability for NHS contracts.
Answered by Will Quince
My Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has not held discussions with National Health Service trusts running pilots of Palantir’s Foundry software.
The use of Foundry by trusts is an operational issue for NHS England. Foundry pilots have been delivering benefits such as enabling trusts to improve hospital discharges and theatre utilisation and to reduce waiting lists through identifying errors.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for NHS treatment in (a) Liverpool, Walton constituency and (b) England.
Answered by Will Quince
Reducing waiting times for National Health Service treatment in England, including in Liverpool, Walton constituency, is one of the Government’s top priorities.
To support elective recovery, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity. Steps taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternative capacity in other trusts or the independent sector, engaging with patients to understand their choices, increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs and rolling out up to 160 Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) by March 2025. These include an established spoke CDC at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, to which general practices in Liverpool, Walton constituency can refer patients for key diagnostic checks, tests and scans.
The NHS is reducing long waits despite more people coming forward for treatment. Waits of 18 months or more have now been virtually eliminated (7,289 patients were waiting 18 months or more for treatment as of July 2023, a decrease of more than 94% from its peak in September 2021). We are taking action to bring down waits of over a year, including reducing the number of people requiring unnecessary follow-up appointments, to free up capacity.