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 (a) recruit and (b) retain GPs.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In January 2019 we announced in the NHS Long Term Plan that we are investing an extra £4.5 billion in primary and community care by 2024. This was followed by the five-year general practitioner (GP) contract, which will provide greater financial security and certainty for practices to plan ahead and will see billions of extra investment for improved access, expanded services at local practices, the development of primary care networks and longer appointments for patients who need them.
NHS England and Health Education England (HEE) are working together with the profession to increase the GP workforce. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why GPs are leaving the profession and encourage GPs to return to practice.
In 2018, a record 3,473 doctors accepted a place on GP specialty training. Additionally, NHS England’s International GP Recruitment programme is bringing suitably qualified doctors from overseas to work in English general practice.
We have a broad offer to support GPs to remain in the National Health Service including the GP Retention Scheme, the GP Retention Fund, the GP Health Service and the Releasing Time for Care Programme.
It is encouraging to see as of June 2019, over 250 more doctors, and over 800 more nurses and other staff with direct patient care responsibilities working in general practice compared to June 2018.
To address workload pressures and building on the success in expanding the wider workforce, the new five-year contract for general practice will see funding towards up to 20,000 extra staff working in GP practices, such as physiotherapists and pharmacists. This will help free up doctors to spend more time with the patients who need them.
The interim People Plan published in June 2019 set out the actions the NHS will take now to secure the right staff, leadership and culture it needs to deliver the Long Term Plan and high quality, safe care. The final People Plan will set out a broader strategy for a sustainable general practice workforce, through both recruitment and retention programmes.
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 mental health of veterans.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
In England, veterans access mainstream National Health Service provided mental health services as well as the bespoke veteran specific mental health services that NHS England and NHS Improvement have put in place.
The Transition, Intervention and Liaison service launched in 2017, supports serving personnel who need additional mental health support as they are leaving the Armed Forces and veterans who have mental health issues. There are three elements to the service:
- in-reach services for those in transition, leading up to, and leaving the Armed Forces;
- services for veterans with complex presentation; and
- general services for veterans.
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 has taken to (a) measure and (b) improve patient experience and quality of compassionate care.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Feedback on patients’ views on the services they receive is a vital part of the way the National Health Service improves services and delivers improved outcomes for patients.
Patients are offered a range of opportunities to feed back on the quality of the care they receive. These include near real-time feedback such as the Friends and Family Test, which is a survey conducted by NHS service providers to identify good practice and opportunities to make improvements, locally developed feedback programmes, and annual feedback such as national surveys including the Cancer Patient Experience Survey, the GP Patient Survey, published by NHS England, and surveys conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to assess experiences in specific settings such as inpatient care.
The CQC also inspects against whether services are caring and responsive to people’s needs. Under the ‘caring’ domain the CQC’s inspectors look for evidence that staff involve and treat service-users with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
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, how many doctors there were in hospitals in Surrey in (a) the first quarter of 2010 and (b) the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics for England. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care, local authorities or other providers.
The following table shows the number of doctors at Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust as at May 2019, the latest available data, compared to the first three months of 2010. Figures are full time equivalents.
| January 2010 | February 2010 | March 2010 | May 2010 | May 2019 |
Doctors | 923 | 939 | 939 | 943 | 1,244 |
Source: NHS Digital Workforce Statistics
Change in the numbers may be seasonal: it is recommended that comparisons between years use the same month (for example, May 2010 to May 2019).
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 the Government is taking to improve support for children and young people with mental health issues.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Expanding access to children’s mental health services is a priority for this Government. In 2017/18, around 30.5% of children and young people then estimated to have a mental health condition were able to benefit from treatment and support, up from an estimated 25% two years earlier.
The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, published in 2016, committed that, by 2020/21, at least an additional 70,000 children and young people each year will receive treatment; that there is a mental health crisis response that meets the needs of under 18 year olds; and that we will achieve a target of 95% of children and young people with eating disorders accessing treatment within one week for urgent cases, and four weeks for routine cases. We are providing an additional £1.4 billion to improve specialist children and young people’s mental health services between 2015-21.
On top of those commitments, the NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, set an ambitious goal of an extra 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 (in addition to the 70,000 children referred to above) receiving support via NHS-funded mental health services by 2023/24; that there will be 24/7 mental health crisis provision for children and young people; and that there will be a comprehensive offer for 0-25 year olds that reaches across mental health services for children, young people and adults. NHS England has also published its Mental Health Implementation Plan in July 2019, setting out its plans for delivering its Long Term Plan goals.
Mental health services will grow faster than the overall National Health Service budget, with a ringfenced investment worth at least £2.3 billion a year for mental health services by 2023/24. Children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending.
We are making good progress towards our goals. In December 2018 we announced the first 25 trailblazer sites that will provide new school-based mental health support teams for those with mild to moderate mental health issues, and which will be operational by the end of this year. On 12 July 2019, NHS England announced that more mental health support teams are to be set up in 57 areas and will be operational by the end of 2020. We are trialling a four-week waiting time standard in 12 of the trailblazer sites, ahead of introducing new national waiting time standards for all children and young people who need specialist mental health services.
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 help protect the mental health of NHS staff.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The NHS Long Term Plan sets out that NHS England will provide targeted support to trusts to access fast track occupational health services and a line management development programme, building on existing work with 70 organisations. This complements the publication of the NHS Health and Wellbeing Framework in May 2018, which includes recommendations from ‘Thriving at Work: The Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers’.
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 publicise whistleblower rights and protections for GPs.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We are committed to ensuring that all National Health Service staff, including general practitioners, are aware of how and where they can speak up about their concerns and that when they do so they are supported, and their concerns are taken seriously. A national speaking up helpline ‘Speak Up Direct’ provides advice and support on speaking up in the NHS for all staff.
The National Guardian we set up in 2016 and the local network of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians are playing a crucial role across the country in providing safe avenues for staff to raise concerns within their own organisations. The National Guardian also works to raise awareness of speaking up opportunities for all NHS staff and promotes the value of a healthy ‘speaking up’ culture.
In 2016, NHS England published Freedom to Speak Up guidance for primary care and the National Guardian is currently focusing on accelerating the implementation of Freedom to Speak Up and the local Guardian role in primary care organisations.
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 the Government is taking to tackle the effect of social media on the mental health of young people.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Government recognises that social media can be a force for good, supporting education and helping people make positive connections with other people. However, as with most innovations, the Government is committed to taking action to ensure the risks of social media, particularly on the mental health of young people.
On 7 February, the United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers published their independent systematic map of evidence on screen and social media use in children and young people. They also published advice for parents and carers, giving tips on how to have a healthy balance with screen time. This is based on evidence around activities that are important for healthy child development such as sleep, exercise and education.
We want the UK to be the safest place to be online. The Government wants to work with internet and social media providers to achieve this, and we are clear we will take tougher action were needed. The Department of Health and Social Care has been working closely alongside colleagues at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on their upcoming Online Harms White Paper. This White Paper will set out a range of legislative and non-legislative measures detailing how the Government will tackle online harms and set clear responsibilities for tech companies to keep UK citizens safe.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to (a) improve the (i) prevention and (ii) management of meningitis in children and (b) enhance rehabilitation programmes for children who have had that disease.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
Prevention of meningococcal disease is primarily achieved by vaccination. Two vaccines have been added to the national programme recently to help protect against meningitis and septicaemia; the meningitis B vaccine for babies and the meningitis ACWY vaccine for school leavers and university students. Where there is a case, local Public Health England Centres advise on the use of antibiotics and vaccination for appropriate close contacts.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has produced both a quality standard (QS) and a clinical guideline (CG) relevant to bacterial meningitis and meningococcal septicaemia in children:
- QS19 - ‘Meningitis (bacterial) and meningococcal septicaemia in children and young people’ available at:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs19
- CG102 - ‘Meningitis (bacterial) and meningococcal septicaemia in under 16s: recognition, diagnosis and management’ available at:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg102
Basic inpatient care combined with out-patient rehabilitation is delivered by Specialty Multidisciplinary Teams who will engage with other specialties as required to address any additional identified needs following recovery from infection.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for commissioning rehabilitation services, in line with their assessment of the specific rehabilitation needs of different groups within their localities. In 2016, NHS England published “Commissioning Guidance for Rehabilitation”, which is intended to support local CCGs in the commissioning of local rehabilitation services across a range of settings.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much funding has been invested by (a) his Department, (b) the National Institute for Health Research and (c) the Medical Research Council in research on (i) bowel, (ii) prostate, (iii) breast, (iv) lung, (v) testicular and (vi) throat cancer in each of the last seven years.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
During the last seven years, the Department has funded research through its Policy Research Programme (PRP) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The PRP commissions research to inform the development and implementation of policy, and the Department’s investment in cancer research is mainly through the NIHR.
Spend on research funded directly by NIHR is categorised by Health Research Classification System (HRCS) health categories including ‘cancer’. There are no HRCS health sub-categories such as for bowel cancer and other specific cancer sites and information on total annual NIHR spend on research on specific cancer sites is not held. A figure for total NIHR cancer research spend in 2016/17 is not yet available. Figures for the previous six years are as follows:
| £ million |
2010/11 | 100.9 |
2011/12 | 104.1 |
2012/13 | 133.2 |
2013/14 | 129.9 |
2014/15 | 134.7 |
2015/16 | 142.4 |
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is an independent research funding body which receives its grant in aid from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. MRC expenditure on cancer research includes research into the biology, causes, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer as well as research on outcomes. Figures for MRC cancer research spend are provided below (source: National Cancer Research Institute). Data on spend from 2015 is not currently available.
| £ million |
2010 | 107.7 |
2011 | 112.1 |
2012 | 95.8 |
2013 | 79.9 |
2014 | 76.2 |
Information on MRC spend on research on specific cancer sites covering the seven year period requested is not held and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.