Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether Northern Ireland will receive funding through the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia mission; and what her planned timetable for delivery of the mission is.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Spending and delivery plans for the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission are currently in development. The Dementia Mission Co-Chairs Hilary Evans and Professor Nadeem Sarwar have, and continue to, engage extensively across the sector to understand and develop the missions’ key aims, ensuring it addresses the challenges the sector faces and that patient voices are heard. This has informed the missions focus on three key pillars: biomarkers and experimental medicine; clinical trials infrastructure and innovation; and end-to-end implementation.
In March 2024, the Government hosted a roundtable and reception where charities, academics, investors, business leaders, and people with lived experience came together to further accelerate efforts to tackle this devastating illness, and to thank all those involved in supporting dementia research, including charities across the United Kingdom. This event made a series announcements, including: awarding a share of the £6 million of funding to 10 projects through Innovate UK’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) dementia biomarker tools competition; the appointment of Scott Mitchell as the People’s Champion for the Dementia Mission; the appointment of Dr Ruth McKernan CBE as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Neurodegeneration Initiative, which will be a public-private partnership delivering the mission's objectives around biomarkers, boosting the number and speed of clinical trials in dementia and neurodegeneration, and working with regulatory bodies around the implementation of new treatments; and the appointment of the Medicines Discovery Catapult as the delivery partner for the establishment of the Neurodegeneration Initiative. The Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission continues to develop its deliverables, and will announce further plans for their delivery in due course.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made a recent assessment of the effectiveness of the help us, help you campaign.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No recent assessment has been made. In 2020 NHS England launched the Help Us, Help You (HUHY) campaigns, a major public information campaign to persuade the public to seek urgent care and treatment when they needed it. The HUHY campaign strategy is designed to address the underlying barriers to cancer diagnosis, including multifaceted fears and a lack of body vigilance, along with the lack of knowledge of cancer symptoms, to encourage people to present earlier.
On 8 January 2024, NHS England relaunched the HUHY campaign for cancer, designed to increase earlier diagnosis of cancer by reducing barriers to seeking earlier help, as well as increasing body vigilance and knowledge of key red flag symptoms. This campaign addresses barriers to people coming forward with suspected signs of cancer in general, and is not specific to screening or cervical cancer.
We are seeing continued high levels of urgent cancer referrals, which suggests the HUHY campaigns continue to be effective. Over 12,000 urgent referrals were seen for suspected cancer per working day in February 2024, compared to approximately 9,000 in January 2020.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an estimate of changes in numbers of people reporting (a) physical and (b) mental health issues in the week following clock changes in March for British Summer Time in the last three years.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department has not made an estimate of the number of people, or changes to the number of people, reporting physical or mental health issues following the clock changes.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of when data will be placed into the federated data platform for NHS trusts and integrated care systems.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Federated Data Platform will allow the National Health Service to make better use of data to improve outcomes for patients, including reducing waits and discharging people quicker from hospital.
45 organisations who participated in the NHS England pilot, broken down into 42 trusts, two integrated care boards, and the City Healthcare Partnership Community Interest Company, have begun to transition into the Federated Data Platform, in a sequence of waves scheduled between March and May 2024. NHS England aims for all trusts and integrated care boards who wish to use the platform to do so within the next three years.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when does she expect the photobiomodulation process for treatment of those with severe eye problems to be made available via the NHS.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Clinicians utilise the best available evidence, including guidance from The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), to determine appropriate treatments to be made available to patients via the National Health Service.
The NICE runs an interventional procedures programme to assess the efficacy and safety of interventional procedures used for treatment or diagnosis, to determine whether they work well enough and are safe enough for use in the NHS. The programme can assess procedures that involve incision, puncture, and entry into a body cavity, or that use ionising, electromagnetic, or acoustic energy.
The NICE’s interventional procedures programme is not currently looking at this procedure in relation to the treatment of eye problems, and there has been no notification to the NICE for consideration of photobiomodulation for treatment of those with severe eye problems.
The Department is committed to partnering with industry, patients, and the wider health and social care system to ensure effective and innovative medical technologies that support the continued delivery of high-quality care and outstanding patient safety, are available to patients. Innovators can sign up to the NHS Innovation Service for guidance on the key steps to introduce their idea or product to the NHS.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her timetable is for the introduction of the recommendations of the final evaluation report for the secondary care routine reflux cohort of the Cytosponge test.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 26 February 2024, NHS England published the results of the cytosponge test pilot for secondary care routine reflux and Barrett’s surveillance cohort, which began in January 2021, and launched at 30 hospitals across England. The pilot tested over 8,500 patients with the capsule sponge test. Evaluation of a cohort of patients showed almost eight out of 10 patients, who completed a test, were discharged without the need for further testing, freeing up endoscopy capacity for higher risk patients and those referred for urgent tests for oesophageal cancer. Patients with positive results from the capsule sponge test who were referred on for an endoscopy had the highest prevalence of Barrett’s oesophagus, at 27.2%, compared to zero patients with negative results who completed an endoscopy.
A timetable for the introduction of the recommendations of the final evaluation report for the secondary care routine reflux cohort of the cytosponge test, is yet to be finalised and published.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 16 November 2023 to Question 1604 on Cardiovascular Diseases, what her planned timetable is to respond to the report from the Government Champion for Personalised Prevention's taskforce on cardiovascular disease.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is considering the recommendations of the Government Champion for Personalised Prevention, and information on the next steps will be provided in due course.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she expects to receive the Group B Streptococcus cluster randomised trial results.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave on 15 January 2024 to Question 8936.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will hold discussions with the food industry on reducing the sugar content in (a) food and (b) drink products.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As she has done in previous ministerial roles, the current Secretary of State will recuse herself on departmental issues relating to outside interests, all of which have been declared to the House and under the Ministerial Code.
Discussions have been held with businesses by the Minister for Public Health, and officials, since 2015, on the actions they can take to reduce the sugar content of food and drink products.
The Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) came in to force in April 2018. Between 2015 and 2020, levels of sugar in drinks subject to SDIL reduced by 46%, removing over 45,000 tonnes of sugar, while sales increased by approximately 21%. The reductions were spread evenly across all socio-economic groups.
Milk based drinks are excluded from the levy but are included in the voluntary sugar reduction programme. To date, sugar and calories in pre-packed milk based drinks sold through retail have reduced by 29.7% and 20%, respectively. Pre-packed milk substitute drinks have reduced sugar and calories by 6.9% and 8%, respectively.
The voluntary sugar reduction programme also includes the foods that contribute most to the sugar intakes of children aged up to 18 years old. Between 2015 and 2020, reductions in sugar levels were seen in all categories, with breakfast cereals and yogurts and fromage frais showing the greatest change with reductions of 14.9% and 13.5%, respectively, and removing 21,960 tonnes of sugar.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the cost to her Department was for officials to attend the fourth meeting of the Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations in July 2023.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The travel and accommodation costs for officials to attend was £980.15.