Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the APPG on Brain Tumours' report entitled Pathway to A Cure, whether his Department has taken steps to implement that report's recommendations on engaging healthcare professionals with research.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department welcomes the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report, recommendations of which continue to be worked through with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Research and Innovation and the Medical Research Council (MRC), and with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
In February 2023 the APPG report recommended that NIHR and UKRI should build research capacity, encouraging and retaining talent through fellowships and research incentives. In July 2023, NIHR jointly funded with the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission (TJBCM), the first two TJBCM Neuro-Oncology Fellowships, a new Fellowship Programme to support high quality training in neuro-oncology clinical practice and research to ensure clinicians are equipped with the relevant research skills needed to lead neuro-oncology trials that change practice.
Other capacity-building initiatives underway include: the designation of 28 TJBCM adult Centres of Excellence within the National Health Service, creating a world-class network of brain tumour treatment and research centres to provide the best care and share best practice; the Tessa Jowell Academy Programme, a free national learning and networking digital platform for NHS brain tumour professionals to share excellence in research, treatment and care; and the TJBCM Brain Tumour Research Novel Therapeutics Accelerator programme, to review and provide guidance on the translation and development of novel treatments, guided by a multidisciplinary international group of experts.
The NIHR is continuing to work with the TJBCM to develop further capacity-building initiatives.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the APPG on Brain Tumours' report entitled Pathway to A Cure, whether his Department plans to implement a joint strategy for brain tumour research with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department welcomes the All-Party Parliamentary Group report, recommendations of which continue to be worked through with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Research and Innovation and the Medical Research Council (MRC), and with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
The report recommended action by the research funding agencies on coordinating activities and making funding available. We are taking steps to ensure that funders work closely together to coordinate work along the translational pathway, from the discovery and early translational science typically supported by the MRC, feeding through to the applied health and care research funded by the NIHR.
It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions. As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. The level of research spend in a particular area, is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of conducting health impact assessments of the public health impacts of new free trade agreements; and if he will make an impact assessment of the potential impact of accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership on public health.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department of Health and Social Care does not carry out specific health impact assessments for Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Section 42 of the Agriculture Act 2020 commits the Government to produce a report which examines new FTAs in the context of their impact on domestic statutory protections in the United Kingdom, including the impact on human health. This report must be laid in Parliament as part of the scrutiny process. This process will apply to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) Agreement.
The “Section 42 report”, as it is known, is led by the Department for Business and Trade, and is drafted in consultation with other Government departments, including the Department of Health and Social Care.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
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 care within NHS podiatry services, in the context of trends in vacancy rates of NHS podiatrists.
Answered by Will Quince
NHS England has worked extensively to enhance and modernise the podiatry professions. Central to this has been the development of education and training for support workers in podiatry and the development of the the podiatry apprenticeship.
NHS England is also continuing to promote podiatry as a career option through a suite of careers resources. The recently launched NHS Employers guide to podiatry sets out the full range of opportunities and offers guidance from career promotion in schools, to effective staff recruitment, retention and return to practice.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
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 encourage people to work in podiatry.
Answered by Will Quince
NHS England has worked extensively to enhance and modernise the podiatry professions. Central to this has been the development of education and training for support workers in podiatry and the development of the the podiatry apprenticeship.
NHS England is also continuing to promote podiatry as a career option through a suite of careers resources. The recently launched NHS Employers guide to podiatry sets out the full range of opportunities and offers guidance from career promotion in schools, to effective staff recruitment, retention and return to practice.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Public Health England's Salt reduction targets for 2024, published in September 2020, when he expects a report on the food industry’s progress towards meeting those targets to be published.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The salt reduction strand of the Government’s voluntary reformulation programme continues, with monitoring data being collected and industry encouraged to continue to work towards meeting the 2024 targets. There is currently no confirmed publication date for the report on the food industry’s progress but it is not expected until next year. An update will be provided in due course.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has previously supported air ambulance charities with targeted funding support; and if he will provide funding specifically targeted at air ambulance charities.
Answered by Will Quince
Air ambulances are not directly funded by the National Health Service. However, the Government has provided significant and sustained support to the sector. In 2019, the Department launched a three year capital grant programme which allocated £10 million to nine air ambulance charities across England, of which London’s Air Ambulance Charity and Barts Health NHS Trust received £1,393,552.
In addition, the Department provided £6 million of COVID-19 emergency funding to all 21 air ambulance charities across the United Kingdom, to ensure that each charity could continue to provide their life-saving services during the pandemic. London’s Air Ambulance Charity received £252,500 of this funding.
There are no current plans to provide further funding to the sector which operates through a longstanding and successful charitable model.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
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 the number of consultants and other NHS workers who will return to work as a result of the removal of the pensions lifetime allowance.
Answered by Will Quince
The decision to retire is a personal one and it is not possible to assess the impact of a specific factor. Estimates based on projected pension scheme data indicate that around 22,000 senior National Health Service clinicians could exceed the previous £40,000 annual allowance in 2023/24, and that around 31,000 clinicians had reached at least 75% of the £1.073 million lifetime allowance.
Around 3,000 general practitioners (GPs) and hospital doctors retire each year and around 40% of GPs and 17% of hospital doctors take voluntary early retirement. In 2020/21, there were 1,615 lifetime allowance charges paid over to HM Revenue & Customs in respect of NHS pensions claimed. It is not possible to break down this data by occupation.
The chair of the British Medical Association’s Pension Committee said that removing the lifetime allowance will be potentially transformative for the NHS. The changes announced at Budget will ensure that the vast majority of doctors in the NHS are not disincentivised from remaining in roles and taking on extra hours, as pension tax is no longer a trigger event for retirement.
From 1 April 2023, NHS Pension Scheme members who have put their 1995 Section benefits into payment can re-join the scheme and build further pension if they return to work.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential implications for his policies of the case of Dr S. Shashikanth and the decision not to share patient data with a primary care trust; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of enabling general practitioners to determine at a practice-level whether to share patient data across an integrated care system.
Answered by Will Quince
‘Data saves lives: reshaping health and social care with data’, published in June 2022, prioritises appropriate data sharing across health, social care and public health systems to ensure patient safety. As of March 2022, all integrated care systems in England have implemented a basic shared care record, connecting National Health Service trusts and general practices.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the (a) Food Standards Agency and (b) UK Health Security Agency in tackling E. Coli 0157.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Between 28 August and 4 September 2022, an increase in the number of presumptive Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157 referrals to UK Health Security Agency was observed. On 10 September a cluster of cases of a specific strain of STEC O157 was confirmed through whole genomic sequencing.
All cases of illness of STEC O157 are interviewed and public health advice is given to at-risk groups to prevent onward transmission. After the results were available which confirmed an outbreak, 60 people were re-interviewed for investigation from 13 September and were notified of the outbreak. The general public were not informed of the outbreak as the suspected cause of infection was not established until the latter period of the investigation. It was therefore not possible to provide appropriate public health advice.
A report on the management and outcomes of the investigation is being prepared. A routine assessment of cross-agency incident responses and any areas for improvement to develop and implement action plans for outbreak management will be scheduled imminently. We are unable to estimate the average time between notification of an outbreak based on the results of whole genome sequencing and the provision of information to those affected and the general public. Such timings are dependent on factors including the cause of the outbreak and whether epidemiological and food tracing investigations can conclusively identify a specific implicated food and supply chain. Multi-agency investigations are initiated immediately on detection of STEC O157 outbreaks. Once the food vehicle of infection is confirmed, control measures are implemented by the Food Standards Agency in a matter of days.