Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
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 9 April 2025 to Written Question 43758 on NHS England, how any short-term upfront costs incurred will be funded.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Detailed plans are being formulated by a joint Department and NHS England programme team. The remit of work includes formulation of the relevant costs and securing the required funding. Funding conversations between the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, and HM Treasury are ongoing. Further detail on the costs and funding mechanisms will be provided as this work develops.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
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 help reduce times for the diagnosis of endometriosis.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to prioritising women’s health, and we are making progress in ensuring that women with endometriosis receive timely and effective treatment.
Clinical guidelines support healthcare professionals to diagnose and treat conditions. In November 2024 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence updated its guideline on the diagnosis and management of endometriosis. This includes updated recommendations that, for women with symptoms of endometriosis, initial pharmacological treatment should take place in primary care, and that this can take place in parallel with additional investigations and referral to secondary care if needed. This will help women receive more timely treatment. The guideline is available at the following link:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng73
We have taken urgent action to tackle gynaecology waiting lists through the Elective Reform Plan. In gynaecology, the plan supports innovative models offering patients care closer to home, as well as the piloting of gynaecology pathways in community diagnostic centres. Alongside the plan, we published a new partnership agreement between the NHS and the independent sector, which will help cut gynaecology waiting lists faster.
Additionally, to provide quicker access for patients to common surgical hub procedures such as a laparoscopy, which can be used to diagnose and treat endometriosis, we have committed to opening 17 new and expanded surgical hubs by June 2025, and ramping up the number of hubs over the next three years.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
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 help support women with endometriosis in Mid Bedfordshire constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to prioritising women’s health and improving the care received by those suffering from gynaecological conditions, including endometriosis.
We encourage any woman or girl with symptoms of endometriosis to contact their general practice (GP). In Central Bedfordshire, GPs have been participating in education sessions over the last year focused on periods and endometriosis, to help improve care and treatment. This includes reviewing the updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance which recommends giving a likely diagnosis of endometriosis, after careful assessment, and initiating treatment with options including hormonal contraceptive methods if needed. This can take place in parallel with a referral to the specialist service.
The Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board also commissions a specialist endometriosis service which is provided by a multidisciplinary team of gynaecologists, a nurse specialist, laparoscopic bowel surgeons, urologists, radiologist, and the pain team. For Central Bedfordshire residents, this is provided by the Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and a referral by a GP or sexual health doctor is required. The service was recently accredited for 2025 as a British Society of Gynaecology Endoscopy Endometriosis Centre.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the current average diagnosis time for endometriosis.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to prioritising women’s health and improving the care for gynaecological conditions, including endometriosis.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published an update to the guideline on endometriosis diagnosis and management in November 2024. This makes firmer recommendations for healthcare professionals on referral and investigations for women with suspected endometriosis, which will help women receive a diagnosis and treatment more quickly.
For many women with symptoms of endometriosis, initial pharmacological treatment takes place in primary care and can be in parallel with a referral for further investigations. As a result, looking at diagnosis times alone is unlikely to be the only measure of whether women are receiving care for endometriosis in a timely matter. NHS England is looking into metrics that best reflect timely access to care and outcomes for women, including for endometriosis. This work will explore whether time to diagnosis is the optimum measure.
An ongoing study by the Office for National Statistics is investigating the impact of endometriosis on women's labour market outcomes. One component of this study is linking primary and secondary care data to better understand diagnosis times for endometriosis.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish his Department’s impact assessment on closing NHS England.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The abolition of NHS England will strip out the unnecessary bureaucracy and cut the duplication that comes from having two organisations doing the same job. By the end of the process, we estimate that these changes will save hundreds of millions of pounds a year, which will be reinvested in frontline services.
It is only right that with such significant reform, we commit to carefully assessing and understanding the potential impacts, as is due process. Evidence from these ongoing assessments will inform our programme as appropriate.
The Government is committed to transparency and will consider how best to ensure that the public and parliamentarians are informed of the outcomes.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of closing NHS England on integrated care boards.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ministers and senior Department officials will work with the new executive team at the top of NHS England, led by Sir Jim Mackey, to jointly lead this transformation. As we work to bring the two organisations together, we will ensure that we continue to evaluate impacts of all kinds.
As part of the necessary changes to support the National Health Service to recover, NHS England has also indicated that integrated care boards (ICBs) should reduce in size. We will work with the NHS to get it back on its feet and make it fit for the future.
In a letter from Sir Jim Mackey on 1 April 2025, NHS England published further detail on the future of ICBs in a letter issued to all ICBs and NHS trusts and foundation trusts. This letter is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/working-together-in-2025-26-to-lay-the-foundations-for-reform/
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
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 18 March 2025 to Question 36504 on Mental Health Services: Children, how many of the 8,500 additional mental health workers will be based in Bedfordshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are working with NHS England to consider options to deliver this commitment alongside the refresh of the Long Term Workforce Plan.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
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 impact of the provisions outlined in his Department's press release entitled Crack teams get patients off waiting lists at twice the speed, published on 16 March 2025, on people in Bedfordshire.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients first, and we have wasted no time in getting to work cutting National Health Service waiting lists and ensuring people have the best possible experience during their care.
Further Faster 20 (FF20) is a scheme to tackle waiting lists through targeted support to improve and streamline pathways for patients at 20 trusts in areas with high levels of economic inactivity. The latest data from October 2024 to January 2025 shows that waiting lists in areas with an FF20 trust have, on average, been reduced at more than double the rate of the rest of the country, falling 130% faster in areas where the Government’s scheme is in action, compared to the national average. A total of 37,000 cases have been removed from waiting lists in those 20 areas, averaging almost 2,000 patients per local trust. Following the success of the programme, the Government has confirmed that this initiative will be rolled out to additional providers this year, to boost NHS productivity and cut waiting times.
The Bedfordshire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust was not one of the 20 trusts targeted through the FF20 scheme, though the trust may access the resources of the wider Further Faster programme, which was rolled out to all trusts in March 2024.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will estimate the cost to the public purse of (a) redundancies and (b) all other costs arising from the proposed abolition of NHS England.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise that there may be some short-term upfront costs as we undertake the integration of NHS England and the Department, but these costs and more will be recouped in future years because of a smaller and leaner centre. By the end of the process, we estimate that these changes will save hundreds of millions of pounds a year, which will be reinvested in frontline services.
As we work to return many of NHS England’s current functions to the Department, we will ensure that we continue to evaluate impacts of all kinds.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was not included in the Great British Energy Solar project.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England received an extremely positive response to this scheme, with over 300 bids (covering 140 trusts) that could potentially have been taken forward.
The Department worked closely with NHS England and our partners at Great British Energy to apply a rigorous evaluation process to this longlist. This included a thorough deliverability screening, value for money assessment, and final assurance process to ensure that all projects were focused on core estate (to ensure the expected lifetime of the building matched or exceeded that of the new assets), alongside careful verification of the funding, value for money, and delivery data provided by trusts.
Regrettably, this meant that many projects missed out despite offering significant value.