Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to monitor the effect of emergency legislation on Coronavirus on recipients of social care.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Coronavirus Act 2020 introduced new Care Act easements to ensure the best possible care for people in our society during this exceptional period.
The guidance states that local authorities should report any decision to operate under easements, and the reasoning behind this decision, to the Department. This information is collated and will be used to monitor the easements internally.
The Care Quality Commission, Think Local Act Personal, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, the Local Government Association, the Care and Support Alliance and the Chief Social Worker are currently considering how to monitor the use of easements and gain a wider understanding of how COVID-19 impacts people receiving care and support by using a more person-centred approach to monitoring.
Full guidance has been published at the following link:
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to make available additional (a) funding and (b) resources to ensure that NHS (i) doctors and (ii) nurses are able to access psychological support during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Chancellor has been clear that the National Health Service will receive the resources it needs to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. I have commissioned the NHS to create a package of support for NHS staff during the COVID-19 response. This will include training and guidance, access to psychological support and other practical measures to sustain staff wellbeing.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of psychological support and resources available to doctors and nurses in primary care.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The National Health Service currently provides comprehensive mental health support for doctors and dentists in England through the NHS Practitioner Health Programme, a mental health assessment and treatment service that NHS doctors including general practitioners and dentists can access confidentially via self-referral.
Last year, we asked NHS England to develop an NHS People Plan to address workforce challenges and improve the support offered to all NHS staff. The health and wellbeing of NHS staff is very important. As part of the NHS People Plan, we plan to set out a comprehensive package of support that all NHS staff can expect to receive from their employer, including rapid access to occupational health services and psychological support. Publication of the final NHS People Plan has been deferred to allow the NHS to provide maximum operational effort to COVID-19 response. However, we have commissioned the NHS to urgently put in place a package of support for NHS staff during the COVID-19 response. Details of this will be released soon.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
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 facilitate online consultations for outpatients to reduce non-essential contact with clinicians.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The NHS Long Term Plan outlines NHS England and NHS Improvement’s commitment to redesigning outpatient appointments, offering patients the choice of virtual outpatient appointments where appropriate. A pilot programme in April 2019 implemented video consultation in outpatient services at 40 providers. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, NHS England and NHS Improvement are accelerating this work, rapidly scaling up video consultation capability within National Health Service trusts and foundation trusts to reduce the need for physical attendances.
The decision to conduct a consultation via video will be clinically led. NHS England and NHS Improvement are making a web-based video consultation platform available. It works on multiple devices, does not rely on software downloads and access will be free of charge to all NHS trusts and foundation trusts. NHS England and NHS Improvement will provide training and support materials to facilitate rapid deployment of video consulting technology; a nationally assured Data Protection Impact Assessment; a telephone support desk for clinicians and patients; and up to £20,000 per NHS provider for the purchasing of hardware to support the delivery of video consultations.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
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 30 January 2020 to Question 7625 on Cervical Cancer: Screening, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the recommendation on self-test cervical cancer screening contained in the review of adult screening programmes in England published in October 2019.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) reviewed the evidence on the use of human papillomavirus (HPV) self-sampling as a programme modification within the NHS Cervical Screening Programme at its meeting in February 2019. The Committee recognised that HPV self-sampling offered a promising test but that further work was required to ensure its feasibility and value in the current screening programme. Minutes of the UK NSC’s meeting can be viewed at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/uk-national-screening-committee-uk-nsc
Public Heath England is now in the early stages of planning for a formal evaluation of HPV self-sampling as a primary test in the national cervical screening programme. The aim of this evaluation is to address key questions from the UK NSC external review of HPV self-sampling, published in 2017.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
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 abolish tuition fees for (a) student nurses, (b) midwives and (c) allied health professionals.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Government has no plans to abolish tuition fees for student nurses, midwives or those studying one of the allied health profession subjects.
The Government announced in December 2019 that new and continuing students from September 2020 will receive a £5,000-£8,000 grant during their course to help with their cost of living – and they will not have to pay it back. Eligible students will receive at least £5,000 and an additional £1,000 for those with child dependents with further funding of up to £2,000 available to new students in regions or disciplines that are struggling to recruit.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full-time equivalent GP clinical staff there were in (a) Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group area and (b) the North East in 2018-2019.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The number of full-time equivalent (FTE) doctors, direct patient care practitioners and nurses in general practice who worked in general practices in England, the North East and Yorkshire and NHS Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) on 31 December 2018 and on 31 December 2019 are presented in the following table.
Due to a change in the regions, there is no comparable ‘North East’ region between September 2018 and 2019.
|
| Full-time equivalent | ||
All regular general practitioners (GPs) (excludes locums) | All nurses | All direct patient care | ||
England | December 2018 | 34,510 | 16,348 | 12,858 |
December 2019 | 34,708 | 16,819 | 14,050 | |
North East and Yorkshire | December 2018 | 5,122 | 3,154 | 2,454 |
December 2019 | - | - | - | |
Sunderland CCG | December 2018 | 151 | 96 | 56 |
December 2019 | 144 | 100 | 58 | |
Source: NHS Digital
Notes:
1. Data as of 31 December.
2. Figures shown do not include general practitioners, direct patient care staff and nurses working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres and other alternative settings.
3. Each period, figures contain estimates, for practices that did not provide fully valid General Medical Practice general practitioner/nurse/direct patient care/admin/non-clinical staff records.
4. FTE refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. In Registrars' contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours. To ensure consistency, these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours in the table.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee's seventh report of Session 2017-19, Social care funding: time to end a national scandal, published on 4 July 2019, HL Paper 392, if he will make it his policy to allocate an additional £8 billion of funding per year to adult social care.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Putting social care on a sustainable footing, where everyone is treated with dignity and respect, is one of the biggest challenges we face as a society.
The Government is providing councils with access to an additional £1.5 billion for adults and children’s social care in 2020/21. This includes an additional £1 billion of grant funding for adults and children’s social care, and a proposed 2% precept that will enable councils to access a further £500 million for adult social care.
This £1.5 billion is on top of maintaining £2.5 billion of existing social care grants and will support local authorities to meet rising demand and continue to stabilise the social care system.
Future funding for social care will be set out at the next spending review.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
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 6 February 2020 to Question 11501 on Suicide: Males, if he will make it his policy to include representatives from the LGBTQ+ communities in the ONS working group.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is leading the programme of work to analyse the latest data relating to suicide registrations, informed by a group of academics. The ONS has selected the academics from the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group according to their specific expertise in suicide prevention. We expect the ONS will publish its findings in due course.