Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
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 that Parkinson’s Disease services across England are supported to provide the full range of NICE-approved treatment options to eligible patients in a timely manner.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have delivered an additional two million appointments in England, seven months ahead of schedule. This includes operations, consultations, diagnostic tests, and treatments. These additional appointments have taken place across a number of specialities, including neurology.
We have launched a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the National Health Service. The plan will set out a bold agenda to deliver on the three big shifts needed, to move healthcare from hospital to the community, from analogue to digital, and from treatment to prevention. A central and core part of the 10-Year Health Plan will be our workforce and how we ensure we train and provide the staff, technology, and infrastructure the NHS needs to care for patients, including for those with Parkinson’s, across our communities.
There are a number of initiatives supporting service improvement and better care for patients with Parkinson’s disease in England, including the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Programme for Neurology, the RightCare Progressive Neurological Conditions Toolkit, and the Neurology Transformation Programme (NTP).
The GIRFT National Specialty Report made recommendations designed to improve services nationally and to support the NHS to deliver care more equitably across the country. The report highlighted differences in how services are delivered, and provided the opportunity to share successful initiatives between trusts to improve patient services nationally. In addition, the NTP has developed a model of integrated care for neurology services to support integrated care boards (ICBs) to deliver the right service, at the right time for all neurology patients, which includes providing care closer to home.
Once diagnosed, and with a management strategy in place, the majority of people with Parkinson’s can be cared for through routine access to primary and secondary care. NHS England commissions the specialised elements of Parkinson’s care that patients may receive from 27 neurology centres across England. Within these specialised centres, neurological multidisciplinary teams ensure patients can access a range of health professionals, including Parkinson’s disease nurses, psychologists, and allied health professionals such as dieticians and speech and language therapists, and that they can receive specialised treatment and support, according to their needs.
In addition, in February 2024, a new treatment for advanced-stage Parkinson’s, foslevodopa–foscarbidopa, was rolled out in the NHS. It has been shown to improve motor function, with patients experiencing longer periods of time without dyskinesia.
The NHS in England is legally required to make funding available for treatments recommended in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) technology appraisal guidance. If there are any concerns with the availability of a NICE-recommended treatment in a particular area, they should be raised with the local ICB in the first instance.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the number of young people with cancer who were diagnosed at Stage (a) one and (b) two.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave on 25 March 2025 to the Hon. Member for Colne Valley, to Question 38920.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to fill the humanitarian and development gap left by the USAID funding freezes.
Answered by Catherine West
We are currently working to assess the implications of the US funding pause across development sectors, geographic regions, and multilateral organisations. We are gathering information and working with other donor partners to share analysis of the pause before making any decisions.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
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 ensure patients that rely on medicines for (a) epilepsy, (b) ADHD and (c) Parkinson's are not impacted by supply shortages.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is working hard with industry to help resolve intermittent supply issues with some epilepsy medications. As a result of ongoing activity and intensive work, including directing suppliers to expedite deliveries, some issues, including with some carbamazepine, lamotrigine, and oxcarbazepine presentations, have been resolved.
We are aware of an ongoing supply issue with all strengths of topiramate tablets, with the resupply date to be confirmed. Other manufacturers of topiramate tablets can meet the increased demand during this time.
The Department is aware of supply constraints with one supplier of amantadine 100 milligram capsules used in the management of Parkinson’s Disease, however stocks remain available from alternative suppliers to cover demand. The Department have also been notified of a discontinuation of apomorphine (APO-go PFS) 50 milligram/10 milligram pre-filled syringes from April 2025, used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease patients. Alternative formulations of apomorphine remain available for patients, and management guidance has been issued to the National Health Service.
The Department has also been working hard with industry and NHS England to help resolve the supply issues with some attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medicines, which are affecting the United Kingdom and other countries around the world. As a result of intensive work, some issues have been resolved and all strengths of lisdexamfetamine, atomoxetine capsules, and guanfacine prolonged-release tablets are now available.
We are continuing to work to resolve the remaining issues for methylphenidate prolonged-release tablets. We are engaging with all suppliers of methylphenidate prolonged-release tablets to assess the challenges faced and their actions to address them. We are also directing suppliers to secure additional stocks, expedite deliveries where possible, and review plans to further build capacity to support continued growth in demand for the short and long-term. To improve supply and resilience, we are working with prospective new suppliers of methylphenidate prolonged-release tablets to expand the UK’s supplier base.
In collaboration with NHS England’s national ADHD data improvement plan, we plan to combine modelling for future growth forecasts, which will be shared with industry to improve demand forecasting for ADHD medicines.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what his planned timescale is for introducing legislation to ban the import of hunting trophies.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn, on 23 July 2024, PQ 591.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she has had with NHS England on the introduction of (a) gene therapy and (b) other new treatments for patients with thalassaemia.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Department regularly discusses a range of issues with colleagues in NHS England related to patient access to new medicines. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) makes recommendations for the National Health Service on whether all new medicines should be routinely funded by the NHS, based on an assessment of their costs and benefits. The NICE’s appraisal of the gene therapy, exagamglogene autotemcel, for treating transfusion-dependent beta-thalassaemia is currently paused, to allow the company and NHS England to enter into commercial and managed access discussions.
In November 2023, NHS England published a clinical commissioning policy that recommends that allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for adult transfusion dependent thalassaemia should be routinely commissioned.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to enforce pedestrian priority at pedestrian crossing points without traffic control measures as set out in the update to the Highway Code in January 2022.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Highway Code changes to improve road safety for people walking, cycling, and riding horses aim to initiate a positive shift in road user behaviour, by making road users aware of their responsibility to use roads safely and reduce the danger they may pose to others.
Enforcement of the law is a matter for the police, who will decide on the evidence of each individual case, whether an offence has been committed and the appropriate action to take.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring employers to publish salary information when advertising job opportunities.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
There is growing evidence to show that when salary information is not transparent, it has an impact on how people, particularly women and those from ethnic minorities, negotiate pay. This can ultimately result in lower starting salaries and smaller pay rises. In light of this, we have considered the merits of making this a requirement.
However, we appreciate that some employers may find it challenging to be fully transparent about pay, and for many organisations, moving immediately to a system of full pay transparency would require a period of adjustment. We therefore do not believe that introducing a legal requirement to disclose this information is the right course of action.
However, in order to encourage and assist employers in voluntarily adopting this, we are considering what further support employers may need. In addition, our pay transparency pilot will provide insights on the impact it can have.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will meet with the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate and Barnardo’s to discuss how local authorities can work with partners to prevent the over-criminalisation of Black children in the care system.
Answered by David Johnston
We recognise that children in care are more likely than their peers in the general population to have contact with the criminal justice system. That is why we published a joint national protocol with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in 2018 on reducing the unnecessary criminalisation of looked after children and care leavers: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-protocol-on-reducing-criminalisation-of-looked-after-children. The protocol was produced with the input of local authority representatives, and other partners. Since the publication of the protocol, the proportion of children in care aged 10-17 who are charged with an offence or receive a caution has reduced from 3% in 2019 to 2% in 2023. Latest data for year ending March 2023 also show that 3% of care leavers age 19-21 were in custody. This figure has remained the same for the last 5 years.
We are also taking action on risk factors that can lead to criminal behaviour including through our work to improve school attendance.
Through the care leaver Ministerial Board, we are working closely with MoJ to improve support and outcomes of care-experienced people in the criminal justice system.
The MoJ is currently updating its strategy for people with care experience in the criminal justice system, to ensure that their time in the criminal justice system is used to support them to lead crime-free lives. The strategy will include a focus on race and its role in shaping the experiences and outcomes of those with care experience, and will link to wider departmental efforts to address racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system. The MoJ are aiming to publish this strategy in 2024.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Southgate and Wood Green)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will meet with the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate and Barnardo’s to discuss developing a Black Foster Care Network to improve the experiences of Black children in care.
Answered by David Johnston
I refer the hon. Member for Enfield Southgate to the answer of 15 January 2024 to Question 8232: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-01-05/8232.