Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help ensure that (a) young and (b) vulnerable people have access to free contraception.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Local authorities across England are responsible for commissioning comprehensive, openly accessible sexual and reproductive health services, which includes the provision of free contraception to meet local demand. Local authorities decide on commissioning arrangements based on an assessment of local need, including the needs of young and vulnerable people. Contraception is also widely available free of charge through general practices (GPs).
The Government is committed to improving access to contraception, and reducing reproductive health inequalities. The Women’s Health Strategy sets out our 10-year ambition and the actions we are taking to improve disparities in access to services, experiences of services, and outcomes for all women and girls.
As part of our work to deliver the Women’s Health Strategy we have launched a dedicated women’s health area on the National Health Service website as a first port of call for women’s health information, including contraception. We have also worked closely with NHS Digital to create a new YouTube series on contraception, which has been designed to help answer common questions often found in search engines, as well as more detailed information on the range of contraceptive methods available.
In 2023 we also introduced the NHS Pharmacy Contraception Service. This service offers greater choice in how people can access contraception services. It will also create additional capacity in GPs and sexual health clinics, to support meeting the demand for more complex assessments.
We are working with the Women’s Health Ambassador and others to provide health information to diverse groups of women, across their life course. We know that young people who receive effective relationships and sex education are more likely to use contraception and condoms, and less likely to have an unplanned pregnancy as a teenager, and in later life.
The 2020 roll-out of statutory relationships and sex education in all schools means that more young people receive support to prevent early unplanned pregnancy through learning about the full range of contraceptive choices and sexual health services available. The statutory guidance is available at the following link:
As set out in the Women's Health Strategy, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education are working to understand women’s health topics that teachers feel less confident in teaching, and we will work to improve provision of high-quality teaching resources.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to eliminate (a) cervical and (b) other cancer caused by human papillomavirus.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, alongside routine screening, is key to protecting people against strains of HPV that can cause some cancers including cervical, anal, head and neck cancer.
The NHS Cervical Screening Programme (CSP) provides all women and people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 64 years old with the opportunity to be screened routinely, to detect certain types of HPV infection which cause 99.7% of cervical cancer. An in-service evaluation is being commissioned by the National Institute for Health and Care Research to determine whether HPV self-sampling could be used to improve the NHS CSP.
The HPV vaccination is offered to all adolescents in Year 8 of school, and catch-up vaccinations are available to those up to 25 years old, those born on or after 1 September 2006, for both females and males who may have missed vaccination under the schools’ programme, providing an additional failsafe. The HPV vaccination is also recommended to gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, up to and including those aged 45 years old.
NHS England’s vaccination strategy sets out a range of ambitions to improve uptake across the National Health Service’s vaccination programmes. This includes building on existing work and delivery to develop implementation plans for how HPV vaccinations, alongside cervical screening and pre-cancer treatment, can help achieve the NHS ambition to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to NICE guidance entitled Integrated health and social care for people experiencing homelessness, published on 16 March 2022, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that people experiencing homelessness have somewhere safe and secure to recover when discharged from hospital.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to promoting safe and timely discharge for people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness, to appropriate accommodation.
We have ensured every acute hospital has access to a care transfer hub to manage discharge for people with more complex needs. In January 2024, the Department published guidance on discharging people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, to support staff involved in planning safe and supportive discharge of these patients from hospital. The guidance is available at the following link: