Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the ratio of the number of paediatric interventional radiologists to the number of children.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department will discuss these issues with NHS England.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure equal access to paediatric interventional radiology services in the UK.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department will discuss these issues with NHS England.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
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 reduce elective procedure backlogs in child health services.
Answered by Will Quince
In February 2022, the National Health Service published a delivery plan setting out a clear vision for how the NHS will recover and reduce waiting times for elective services, including treatment for children and young people.
To support this recovery, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available to systems in 2021/22 to help drive up and protect elective activity.
Steps being taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternative capacity in other trusts or the independent sector, and engaging with patients to understand their choices. Having virtually met our target to eliminate long waits of two years or more for elective procedures in July, we have also made significant progress in tackling waits of 78 weeks or more for elective services including child health services.
NHS England will soon publish statistics that demonstrate what has been achieved to date.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to reduce treatment waiting times for children and young people.
Answered by Will Quince
In February 2022, the National Health Service published a delivery plan setting out a clear vision for how the NHS will recover and reduce waiting times for elective services including treatment for children and young people. The steps being taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector, and engaging with patients to understand their choices.
To support this recovery the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, and an additional £5.9 billion investment in capital for new beds, equipment and technology.
Additionally, the NHS Long Term plan commits to increase investment into mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24. Part of this increased investment will enable an additional 345,000 children and young people to access NHS funded mental health support.
In September 2022 we also announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including access for children and young people.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how his Department's Major Conditions Strategy will help increase (a) faster and (b) earlier diagnosis of cancer.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Major Conditions Strategy will look at cancer, covering treatment, prevention and follow-up care. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for cancer patients.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to to introduce a cancer-specific plan for increasing cancer survival in England as part of the Major Conditions Strategy.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Major Conditions Strategy will look at cancer, covering treatment, prevention and follow-up care. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for cancer patients.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of a long term strategy for cancer to improve cancer outcomes in England.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Major Conditions Strategy will look at cancer, covering the patient pathway from prevention, through treatment, to follow-up care. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for cancer patients.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Mental Health Bill will include a statutory duty to provide early intervention strategies to (a) detect and (b) help tackle mental health issues for children and young people within all (i) primary and (ii) secondary schools; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. member for Bootle on 27 January in response to question 129867.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department are taking to tackle antibiotic shortages.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department has well-established procedures to deal with medicine supply issues and works closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the pharmaceutical industry, NHS England and others within the supply chain to help prevent shortages and to ensure that the risks to patients are minimised when they do arise.
The continued demand for antibiotics to treat Strep A is making it difficult for some pharmacies to obtain certain antibiotics. We have been taking decisive action to address these temporary issues and to improve access to these medicines. These actions include working with manufacturers and wholesalers to expedite deliveries, bring forward stock they have to help ensure it gets to where it is needed and to boost supply to meet demand as quickly as possible. Deliveries to wholesalers and pharmacies are currently being made, with more expected in the coming days and weeks.
Eight Serious Shortage Protocols have been issued to allow pharmacists to supply an alternative form of penicillin V, or alternative antibiotic, if they do not have the specific product stated on the prescription. Advice has also been provided to pharmacists and general practitioners on the management of the current supply issues, including direction to use alternatives, as necessary.
Community pharmacies make an important contribution to the National Health Service, supporting patients across the country and we are taking action to support them. The Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework 2019-24 five-year deal commits £2.592 billion each year to the sector. The deal sets out the vision for how community pharmacy will support the NHS Long Term Plan by being better integrated into the NHS, delivering more clinical services and becoming the first port of call for minor illness. On 22 September we announced a £100 million investment into pharmacy for the remainder of the five-year deal.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department are taking to prevent community pharmacies making a loss when dispensing NHS prescriptions.
Answered by Will Quince
When market prices go up and pharmacies cannot purchase products at or below the Drug Tariff National Health Service reimbursement price, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) can request the Department to reconsider the reimbursement price. If a new reimbursement price is issued this is known as a concessionary price. Concessionary prices are established using real time data from suppliers to generate prices that are reflective of the overall market.
Further, as part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework, pharmacies are allowed to keep £800 million medicines margin per year. Medicine margin is the difference between the reimbursement price and the prices paid by pharmacies. The Department assesses the overall medicine margin retained by pharmacies, through a medicine margin survey. If less than £800 million has been retained during the year an upwards adjustment is made to some reimbursement prices and if more than £800 million has been retained a downward adjustment is made.