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Written Question
Ashford Hospital
Wednesday 12th July 2023

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 with Cabinet colleagues to help ensure that Woking residents can access Ashford hospital.

Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I congratulate my Honourable Friend for his efforts and ongoing campaign and petition to secure a direct bus route between Woking and Ashford Hospital in Surrey.

He has made me aware that increasing numbers of appointments for Woking residents have been scheduled at Ashford Hospital over recent times and that current public transport links between Woking and the hospital are far from ideal.

To help expand wider access Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has received £15 million in the 2020/21 to 2021/22 period for the expansion of the emergency department and urgent treatment centre that serves, amongst others, the Woking area. This scheme is completed, and the site is operational.

In addition to this, the trust was also allocated £10 million in the 2022/23 to 2023/24 period from our Elective Recovery Targeted Investment Fund for theatres and procedure rooms.

I wish my Honourable Friend a successful outcome to his important campaign on this matter.


Written Question
Ambulance Services: Standards
Thursday 3rd November 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 ambulance response times.

Answered by Will Quince

NHS England has allocated an additional £150 million for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23, supporting improvements to response times through additional call handler recruitment, retention and other requirements. The National Health Service is also investing £20 million to upgrade the ambulance fleet in each year to 2024/25, reducing the age profile and emissions of the fleet and increasing productivity.

The NHS will increase bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds to improve patient flow through hospital and reduce long waiting times in transferring ambulance patients to accident and emergency. NHS England is also providing targeted support to some hospitals facing the greatest delays in the handover of ambulance patients to the care of hospitals, to identify short and longer-term interventions.


Written Question
Health: Screening
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress his Department has made on providing additional (a) scans, (b) tests and (c) check-ups.

Answered by Will Quince

In February 2022 the National Health Service (NHS) published its Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care. The delivery plan commits the NHS to deliver nine million additional treatments and diagnostic procedures over the next three years and around 30 per cent more elective activity than it was doing before the pandemic by 2024-25.

2.06 million key diagnostic tests and scans were conducted in August 2022 compared with pre- pandemic activity of 1.9 million tests for August 2019.

There are currently 89 Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) currently operational that offer additional diagnostic capacity for patients waiting for clinical tests such as MRIs, ultrasounds and CT scans. CDCs have delivered over two million additional tests and scans as of October 2022. Investment in up to 160 CDCs will deliver 17 million tests by March 2025, having added the capacity for nine million more per year once they are all fully operational.

There were on average 1.35 million general practice appointments per working day in September 2022, excluding Covid-19 vaccination appointments. This is an increase of 3.6% from September 2021.


Written Question
General Practitioners
Wednesday 2nd November 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 GP services.

Answered by Neil O'Brien

On 22 September 2022, we announced “Our Plan for Patients,” which we estimate will help general practices deliver over a million more appointments this winter, and we set the expectation that patients who need an appointment within two weeks can get one, with urgent cases being seen on the same day.

This plan committed to publishing practice-level appointment data, to help people make an informed choice about which practice is best for them and set out measures to help patients book appointments more easily and benefit from more options when they need care, for example, from a community pharmacy.

We recognise that some patients have struggled to contact their practice by telephone. To help practices manage demand on their phone systems, NHS England has already offered a short-term telephony solution to all GP practices, which can free up existing telephone lines for incoming calls and help practices match capacity to demand. From December, NHS England will accelerate the delivery of a framework to support all practices to secure cloud-based telephony systems.

We will also free also up funding rules to bolster general practice teams with other professionals who can help them, such as GP assistants and advanced practitioners.


Written Question
Vaccination: Children
Thursday 10th June 2021

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what lessons he has learned from the covid-19 vaccine deployment that can be applied to the routine childhood immunisation programme.

Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Department is reflecting on the lessons learned from the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines and exploring how they can be applied to all immunisation programmes, including the routine childhood immunisation programme.


Written Question
Coronavirus: Vaccination
Tuesday 30th March 2021

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to tackle misinformation on covid-19 vaccines to ensure all communities have access to accurate information.

Answered by Nadhim Zahawi

The Department is working closely with Public Health England and NHS England and NHS Improvement to provide authoritative information to the public to make an informed choice about getting vaccinated. We are also working with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to help social media platforms identify and take action against incorrect claims about the virus in line with their terms and conditions. This includes anti-vaccination narratives that could endanger public health.


Written Question
Care Homes: Coronavirus
Friday 12th March 2021

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 protect care home residents during the covid-19 outbreak.

Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Adult Social Care Winter Plan sets out the actions the Government are taking to support the sector. We are providing free personal protective equipment (PPE) to care homes via the PPE portal until June 2021. In addition, we have provided over £1.4 billion in specific funding for adult social care, £4.6 billion for local authorities to address pressures on public services, infection prevention and control guidance and increased staff testing to identify new cases and protect the workforce as well as residents.

We have placed residents and staff in care homes for older adults in the highest priority group of the vaccination programme, following advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.


Written Question
Mental Health: Law
Monday 8th March 2021

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 bring forward legislative proposals to reform mental health laws.

Answered by Nadine Dorries

On 13 January 2021 we published our white paper on reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. We have launched a 14-week consultation inviting views from the public, professionals, service users and carers and will also engage with those from protected groups to ensure we get this once in a generation opportunity right. The consultation ends 21 April 2021. This will inform the development of a Mental Health Bill.


Written Question
Health Services
Wednesday 3rd March 2021

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 support the provision of non-covid-19 healthcare treatment.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

In addition to the £63 billion of additional funding already provided to the National Health Service in 2020-21 and a further commitment of £20.3 billion in 2021-22 to help manage ongoing COVID-19 pressures alongside non-COVID-19 activity levels, we are providing an additional £3 billion next year, on top of the long-term settlement, to support recovery from COVID-19.

The Spending Review allocated £1 billion to help tackle the elective backlog and support hospitals to cut long waits for treatment by carrying up to one million extra checks, scans and additional operations or procedures. We have also provided funding for enhanced Infection Prevention and Control measures, including £450 million to expand and upgrade accident and emergency departments to reduce overcrowding and improve infection control so we can continue to treat all patients safely.


Written Question
Nurses: Recruitment
Monday 14th September 2020

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 recruit more nurses in the NHS.

Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

Supporting recruitment into the National Health Service nursing workforce is a priority for this Government, underlined by our commitment to deliver 50,000 more nurses for the NHS.

We want all those with the capability and aspiration to become nurses to be able to do so. That’s why We are increasing the number of student nursing places available on degree courses and making a new funding package of at least £5,000 available to all eligible pre-registration nursing students at an English university. We are also supporting alternative routes into nursing and last month announced a £172 million funding package to double the number of apprenticeship placements, so now up to 2,000 aspiring nurses per year will be able to take this route to qualifying as a registered nurse.

To complement these actions we are also recruiting more nurses from overseas and improving the experience of those already working in the NHS so fewer nurses leave; the NHS People Plan was published in July and sets out actions to grow our workforce and foster a culture of inclusion and belonging.