Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the cost to the public purse of treating (a) smoking related illnesses and (b) alcohol related illnesses in the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Tobacco is uniquely harmful, with no safe level of smoking, and no other consumer product that kills two thirds of its long-term users. It causes one in four cancer deaths, including 70% of lung cancer cases, and takes approximately 80,000 lives every year. The latest estimates from Action on Smoking and Health put the cost of smoking in England at over £21 billion. This includes an annual £18 billion loss to productivity through smoking related lost earnings, unemployment, and early death, as well as costs to the National Health Service and social care of £3 billion.
The Department estimated the annual cost of alcohol consumption to the NHS to be £4 billion in 2021. The previous estimate published alongside the Government’s 2012 Alcohol Strategy was updated to reflect inflation. The Department has begun a review of existing methods and evidence to update this estimate. The estimated costs of alcohol and smoking related illnesses to the NHS were not designed to be compared, and are based on different methods, data sources, and time periods.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will extend the Children’s Hospice Grant beyond 2024–25.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England has renewed the Children and Young People hospice funding for 2024/25, again allocating £25 million for children’s hospices, using the same prevalence-based allocation approach as previously used. We are currently considering the future of this funding stream beyond 2024/25.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made a cost benefit analysis of the implementation of assisted dying.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No cost benefit analysis has been made of the implementation of assisted dying.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will publish a list of medical professionals (a) warned, (b) suspended and (c) with attempted suspensions for raising concerns over (i) covid-19 treatments and (ii) the pandemic response.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The General Medical Council (GMC) is the independent regulator of all medical doctors practising in the United Kingdom. It sets and enforces the standards all doctors must adhere to. The GMC is independent of Government, and directly accountable to Parliament. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) operates separately from the investigatory role of the GMC, and makes independent decisions about whether doctors are fit to practise medicine. The hearings and decisions of the MPTS are published and available to access online.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether there are contracts for the cremation of (a) stillborns, (b) miscarriages and (c) baby deaths at a (i) national and (ii) NHS trust level; and if she will publish (A) details and (B) the start dates of those contracts.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Neither the Department nor NHS England holds information on contracts for the cremation of stillborns, miscarriages, and baby deaths.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the guidance by NICE entitled Covid-19 rapid guideline: managing symptoms (including at the end of life) in the community, NG163, published on 3 April 2020, which medical experts were consulted during the commissioning process.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline NG163, published in 2020, was commissioned in accordance with an established agreement between NHS England and NICE. The focus at that time was given to providing rapid guidance on the management of affected patients with COVID-19. The following organisations were consulted on the guideline:
- Association for Palliative Medicine;
- Palliative Care Formulary;
- Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre;
- Cicely Saunders Institute;
- NHS England;
- ICU Steps;
- Macmillan Cancer Support;
- Marie Curie;
- National Audit for Care at the End of Life;
- Palliative Care for Wales;
- Royal College of General Practitioners;
- Royal College of Physicians; and
- Sue Ryder.
The following organisations provided general practice consultation on the guidance:
- NICE GP Reference Group; and
- RCGP Network.
A number of NICE’s COVID-19 rapid guidelines were subsequently incorporated into a single guideline, NG191, for the management of COVID-19 in children and adults. The list of panel members for this guideline is available at the following link:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng191/documents/register-of-interests-2
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will review the safeguarding measures in place for the provision of telemedicine abortion services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Safeguarding is an essential aspect of abortion care, including in telemedicine abortion services. The Department’s Required Standard Operating Procedures for approved independent sector abortion providers in England (RSOPs) include the requirement that all abortion providers have effective arrangements in place to safeguard vulnerable women accessing home-use early medical abortion. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspects against all of the Department’s RSOPs when it inspects an independent sector provider, and safeguarding procedures are included in the CQC’s Termination of Pregnancy inspection framework as areas to be considered during an inspection.
In addition, the Department commissioned the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to develop new national safeguarding guidance for children and young people under 18 years old accessing early medical abortion services, which was published on 30 August 2022, to ensure that robust safeguarding processes are embedded across all abortion services.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 5 December 2023 to Question 3835 on Tobacco: Sales, what discussions she has had with Trading Standards on the resources required to enforce a generational smoking ban.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Smoking is responsible for around 80,000 deaths a year in the United Kingdom and causes approximately one in four cancer deaths in the UK. It also costs our country £17 billion a year and puts a huge burden on the National Health Service.
That is why we will introduce the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in this parliamentary session to create the first smokefree generation, enable us to further crack down on youth vaping and strengthen our enforcement activity, through new powers to fine rogue retailers. To ensure the law is enforced, the Government is providing an additional £30 million a year for enforcement agencies to support work on underage and illicit sales of tobacco products and vapes.
Officials are speaking regularly with trading standards about the use of the additional enforcement funding and around enforcement action more generally.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the potential impact of the proposed generational smoking ban on police expenditure related to the implementation of that ban.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As is the case with existing age of sale legislation for tobacco products, breaches of the new law will be dealt with by local authority trading standards rather than by police forces.
To ensure the law is enforced, the Government is providing an additional £30 million a year for enforcement agencies to support work on underage and illicit sales of tobacco products and vapes.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the guidance by NICE entitled Covid-19 rapid guideline: managing symptoms including at the end of life in the community, NG163, published on 3 April 2020, by what process (a) that guidance was commissioned and (b) the NHS decided (i) to procure Midazolam for use in (A) end-of-life and (B) other patient care and (ii) the quantity of Midazolam it would procure in each of the last four years.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline NG163 published in 2020 was commissioned as part of a programme to provide rapid guidance on the management of affected patients with COVID-19. Several of NICE’s COVID-19 rapid guidelines were incorporated into a single guideline for the management of COVID-19 in children and adults (NG191), which was last updated in June 2023.
Early in the pandemic, NHS England convened a National Clinical Group comprising senior specialist clinicians and relevant specialist pharmacists to develop priority medicines lists for critical care, end of life care and antibiotics and these were kept under review as the pandemic and subsequent clinical knowledge evolved. As part of this process, midazolam was identified as a priority medicine for use in both critical care as an alternative to propofol in the sedatives category, and end of life care as a first line medicine in the anxiety category.
The following table shows the quantity of midazolam procured by the National Health Service in England using NHS England procurement frameworks for use in secondary care in each of the last four years to 2023/24:
Financial year | Quantity of packs |
2020/21 | 587,003 |
2021/22 | 482,458 |
2022/23 | 415,512 |
2023/24 | 229,693 |
It is not possible to differentiate between Midazolam use in end of life and other patient care. This data excludes procurement for use in primary and community care.
In primary health care, procurement is undertaken by retail pharmacies on an individual basis, based on their perception of future demand needs or in direct response to prescriptions received from patients. There is no centralised procurement process for primary care and therefore there is no information that is relevant to the question asked.
Health is largely a devolved matter, and decisions on the procurement of medicines in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are therefore a matter for the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive respectively.