Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of elective hip replacement surgery has been outsourced to the private sector in the last three years.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The proportion of elective hip replacement operations which have been outsourced to the private sector in the last three years is shown in the following table. Figures represent the number of operations – not the number of patients – as some patients may have more than one operation.
Financial year | All providers | Private providers | Proportion Carried out by Private Providers |
2015-16 | 78,328 | 20,245 | 26% |
2016-17 | 81,484 | 22,870 | 28% |
2017-18 | 78,172 | 23,340 | 30% |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS Digital
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to extend Equality Act 2010 to include people with episodic and fluctuating mental health conditions.
Answered by Matt Hancock
The Government is aware of concerns that some people with mental health conditions have experienced problems in accessing the Equality Act 2010’s protections. The Government is therefore exploring a number of options including legislation to extend protections from discrimination in the workplace for people with mental health conditions, including through the Equality Act 2010. We will make an announcement on these issues in due course.
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many students started mental health nursing degree courses in the 2018-19 academic year.
Answered by Matt Hancock
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) collect data on acceptances to mental health nursing degree courses.
Acceptances for 2018/19 entry can still be made until the end of clearing on 23 October 2018.
The final number of acceptances for mental health nursing degree courses for 2018/19 will be available following the publication of end of cycle data by UCAS in December 2018.
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department collects on pre-registration attrition and retention of students on mental health courses following the implementation of Health Education England’s Reducing Pre-Registration Attrition and Improving Retention project.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department does not collect data on attrition and retention of pre-registration students on mental health nursing courses.
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the document, Stepping forward to 2020/21: The mental health workforce plan for England, published by the NHS in July 2017, how many of the additional 19,000 mental health staff to be recruited by 2020 were employed by July 2018.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Stepping forward to 2020/21: The mental health workforce plan for England, published in July 2017, sets out our ambition to deliver 21,000 new posts (professional and allied) across the mental health system, with the expectation that 19,000 of these places will be filled by staff employed directly by the National Health Service.
NHS Digital publish statistics on NHS mental health workforce. Latest data available, as at March 2018, shows that there are 183,476 full time equivalent staff working in mental health in NHS using the widest possible view of the Mental Health and Learning Disability workforce. This is an increase of 915 (0.5%) compared to March 2017 (the baseline year for Stepping Forward). A one-year comparison is given to remove the impact of seasonality, caused by training and recruitment cycles.
Health Education England and NHS England are currently developing a mental health workforce dashboard which will publicly track progress against the targets and commitments set out in Stepping Forward.
In addition to expanding the mental health workforce, the Government also recognises that retaining our skilled staff is crucial. That’s why NHS Improvement and NHS England have been rolling out a special retention programme supporting those trusts with high levels of staff attrition. Directors of Nursing and mental health experts are working directly with trusts to develop ‘Rapid Improvement Plans’ on retention. These plans are required to set out plans for improvements over the next 12 months. Additionally, there are a series of retention master classes which are being rolled out, aimed at Directors of Nursing and HR Directors.
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) posts and (b) vacancies were there in mental health NHS trusts in England in the most recent month for which data is available.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
NHS Improvement collect vacancy rates from individual National Health Service providers and publish them as part of their “Quarterly performance of the NHS provider sector” report.
There are 53 NHS mental health providers. The most recent data reported in Q1 2018/19 (as at the end of June 2018) shows that there are 187,215 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) workforce staff in post with 22,018 vacancies. This is a vacancy rate of 10.5% out of a total workforce establishment (209,233 WTE). This information represents management information only and not an official statistic.
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
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 mental health staff that have left the NHS since June 2017.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care or in general practitioner surgeries, local authorities or other providers.
In England, 23,6861 mental health staff left the National Health Service between June 2017 and 31 May 2018, headcount.
The figure above provides the widest possible view of the mental health workforce available from NHS Digital and includes:
- All staff in mental health, learning disability and care trusts;
- Psychiatry doctors;
- Nurses specialising in “community psychiatry”, “other psychiatry”, “community learning disabilities, “other learning disabilities”; and
- Staff with a primary area of work of “psychiatry”, for example a paediatrician whose primary area of work is ‘psychiatry’.
Data for Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is not available on the Electronic Staff Record and therefore, not included in the figure above.
1Source: NHS Digital, NHS HCHS workforce statistics.
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on educating children and young people about online trolling and the support that is available to them to aid psychological wellbeing and build resilience.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Across Government, we are clear for the need to take action to tackle the increase in cyberbullying and are incorporating such action within related work streams across health, education and culture. The Department of Education is clear that all schools are legally required to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying - including cyberbullying - and recognise that bullying of any kind can now, just as easily, occur online as face to face.
Teaching about social media and internet safety will be integrated into the new subjects of Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education, which schools will be encouraged and supported to teach from September 2019 and required to teach from September 2020. Pupils will be taught about online risks so they can learn to recognise potential dangers for themselves, and about broader steps they can take to protect and support their own and others’ health and wellbeing.
The Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education will continue to work together as we enter the implementation phase of the Green Paper on Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services, which aims to improve provision of mental health support in schools and enable children and young people to access earlier help for emerging problems.
Asked by: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport on tackling online trolling and the effect of trolling on people’s psychological wellbeing.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The current Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the Rt. hon. Matt Hancock MP) is yet to discuss online trolling with the current Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (the Rt. hon. Jeremy Wright MP). However, this Government is clear that online abuse of any kind is unacceptable and the Departments are working together on this.
To help tackle some of the issues around the potential negative impacts of the online environment for children and young people’s mental health, the previous Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the Rt. hon. Jeremy Hunt MP) and the previous Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (the Rt. hon. Matt Hancock MP) set up a working group with social media companies. Within this group we discussed how the companies could take concrete action, particularly in the areas of improved age verification tackling long periods online and harmful content.
We understand that companies have some existing work in place in these areas, and that there are significant challenges, but we are keen for further action to be taken. This is why the previous Secretary of State for Health and Social Care asked social media companies to set out their formal positions on this work and how they envisage we could work together to make further progress. We have received a number of responses and we are working closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport as we consider our next steps, including our contribution to their joint work with the Home Office on a White Paper on on-line harms, following their Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper.